The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal & American Foreign Policy

ISRAELS
NUCLEAR
ARSENAL AND
AMERICAN
FOREIGN POLICY

THE

SAMSgN
OPTI '

SEYMOUR M.

HERSI1

SAMSON
OPTION

SAMSON
OPTION

Israel's Nuclear Arsenal
and American Foreign Policy

Seymour M. Hersh

A

Random House New York

For Elizabeth, Matthew, Melissa, and Joshua

Author's Note

This is a book about how Israel became a nuclear power in
secret. It also tells how that secret was shared, sanctioned, and,
at times, willfully ignored by the top political and military offi-
cials of the United States since the Eisenhower years.

In it, you will find many senior American officials being
quoted — most of them for the first time — about what they
knew and when they knew it. These officials spoke to me not
because of animosity toward the Israeli government, but be-
cause they realized the hypocrisy of the American policy of
publicly pretending that Israel's nuclear arsenal does not exist.
That policy remains in effect as this is written.

I chose not to go to Israel while doing research for this book.
For one thing, those Israelis who were willing to talk to me
were far more accessible and open when interviewed in Wash-
ington, New York, or, in some cases, Europe. Furthermore,
Israel subjects all journalists, domestic and foreign, to censor-
ship. Under Israeli rules, all material produced by journalists
in Israel must be submitted to military censors, who have the
right to make changes and deletions if they perceive a threat to
Israeli national security. I could not, for obvious reasons, sub-
mit to Israeli censorship. Those in the past who have broken
the rules have been refused reentry to Israel.

Those Israelis who talked were not critics of Israel's nuclear
capability, nor would they feel secure without the bomb. They
spoke because they believe that a full and open discussion of
the Israeli nuclear arsenal — and of the consequences of its de-
ployment — is essential in a democratic society.

Seymour M. Hersh
August 1991
Washington^ D.C.

Contents

Author's Note ix

1. A Secret Agreement 3

2. The Scientist 19

3. The French Connection 33

4. First Knowledge 47

5. Internal Wars 59

6. Going Public 71

7. Dual Loyalty 83

8. A Presidential Struggle 93

9. Years of Pressure 117

10. The Samson Option 129

11. Playing the Game 143

12. The Ambassador 159

13. An Israeli Decision 173

14. A Presidential Gift 183

15. The Tunnel 195

xii CONTENTS

16. Prelude to War 209

17. Nuclear Blackmail 225

18. Injustice 241

19. The Carter Malaise 259

20. An Israeli Test 271

21. Israel's Nuclear Spy 285

22. An Israeli Asset 307

Epilogue 317

Acknowledgments 321

Notes 323

Index 335

SAMSON
OPTION

1

A Secret Agreement

America's most important military secret in 1979 was
in orbit, whirling effortlessly around the world every ninety-
six minutes, taking uncanny and invaluable reconnaissance
photographs of all that lay hundreds of miles below. The satel-
lite, known as KH-11, was an astonishing leap in technology:
its images were capable of being digitally relayed to ground
stations where they were picked up — in "real time" — for in-
stant analysis by the intelligence community. There would be
no more Pearl Harbors.

The first KH-11 had been launched on December 19, 1976,
after Jimmy Carter's defeat of President Gerald R. Ford in the
November elections. The Carter administration followed
Ford's precedent by tightly restricting access to the high-qual-
ity imagery: even Great Britain, America's closest ally in the
intelligence world, was limited to seeing photographs on a
case-by-case basis.

The intensive security system was given a jolt in March 1979,
when President Carter decided to provide Israel with KH-11
photographs. The agreement gave Israel access to any satellite
intelligence dealing with troop movements or other potentially
threatening activities as deep as one hundred miles inside the
borders of neighboring Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Jordan.
The Israelis were to get the real thing: the raw and spectacular
first-generation imagery as captured by the KH-11, some of it
three-dimensional — and not the deliberately fuzzed and dulled
photographs that were invariably distributed by the American
intelligence community to the bureaucracy and to overseas al-

4 THE SAMSON OPTION

lies in an effort to shield the superb resolution of the KH-ll's
optics.*

It was a significant triumph for the Israeli government,
which had been seeking access to the KH-11 since the moment
of launch three years before. Jimmy Carter's decision to pro-
vide that high-tech imagery was suspected by some American
intelligence officials as being a reward for Prime Minister
Menachem Begin's successful Camp David summit with Egyp-
tian President Anwar Sadat the year before. These officials un-
derstood what many in the White House did not: adding an
Israeli dimension to the system was a major commitment — and
one that would interfere with the KH-ll's ability to collect the
intelligence its managers wanted. The KH-11 was the most im-
portant advance of its time, explained a former official of the
National Security Agency (NSA), the unit responsible for all
communications intelligence, and every military and civilian
intelligence agency in the government seemed to have an ur-
gent requirement for it. The goal of the KH-ll's managers was
to carefully plan and "prioritize" the satellite's schedule to get
it to the right place at the right time, while avoiding any abrupt
shifts in its flight path or any sudden maneuver that would
burn excess fuel. With good management, the multimillion-dol-
lar satellite, with its limited fuel supply, would be able to stay
longer in orbit, provide more intelligence, and be more cost-
efficient. Carter's decision to give Israel direct access to the
KH-11 completely disrupted the careful scheduling for the
satellite's future use; it also meant that some American intelli-
gence agencies were going to have less access to the satellite. "It
was an unpopular decision in many, many ways," said the for-
mer NSA official.

There were no official protests inside the administration,
however: those few who were distressed by the KH-11 agree-
ment understood that any disquiet, or even second-guessing,

* The KH-11 was at the time known to be the most significant advance in outer-
space reconnaissance. The key element of the sixty-four-foot-long satellite was a down-
ward-looking mirror in front of the camera that rotated from side to side, like a peri-
scope, enabling the satellite to track a single location as it moved across the atmosphere.
The result was a stereoscopic image of unusually high quality that could be even
further enhanced by computer.

A SECRET AGREEMENT 5

could jeopardize their own access to such information and thus
reduce their status as insiders.

The Israelis, not surprisingly, viewed the KH-11 agreement
as a reaffirmation of respect and support from the Carter ad-
ministration, whose director of central intelligence, retired Ad-
miral Stansfield Turner, had abruptly cut back intelligence
liaison with Israel and other friendly nations as part of a re-
structuring of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Israelis,
accustomed to far warmer treatment by Presidents Richard M.
Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, saw the men running the Carter
administration as naive and anti-Semitic; as men who perhaps
did not fully understand how entwined Israel's primary for-
eign intelligence service, Mossad, had become with the CIA
during the Cold War. The 1979 agreement on the KH-11 was no
less than the twenty-eighth in a series of formal Israeli- Ameri-
can cooperative ventures in strategic intelligence since the
1950s.

Nothing has ever been officially disclosed about these ar-
rangements, many of which were financed off-the-books — that
is, from a special contingency fund personally maintained by
the director of central intelligence. Through the 1960s, for ex-
ample, one of the most sensitive operations in the Agency was
code-named kk mountain (kk being the CIA's internal digraph,
or designation, for messages and documents dealing with
Israel) and provided for untold millions in annual cash pay-
ments to Mossad. In return, Mossad authorized its agents to
act, in essence, as American surrogates throughout North Af-
rica and in such countries as Kenya, Tanzania, and the Congo.
Other intelligence agreements with Mossad revolved around
the most sensitive of Israeli activities in the Middle East, where
American dollars were being used to finance operations in
Syria, and inside the Soviet Union, where the CIA's men and
women found it difficult to spy. Some of the Soviet activities
apparently were financed by regular Agency disbursements —
and thus cleared through the appropriate CIA congressional
oversight committees — but the complex amalgamation of
American financing and Israeli operations remains one of the
great secrets of the Cold War.

The Israelis had responded to Admiral Turner's 1977 cutback

6 THE SAMSON OPTION

in liaison — in essence, his refusal to pay for the continuing
operations in Africa and elsewhere — by sharply reducing their
flow of intelligence back to Washington. In the Israeli view, the
KH-11 agreement in March 1979 was made inevitable not by
the success of Camp David but by the CIA's failure to antici-
pate the steadily increasing Soviet pressure on Afghanistan in

1978 and the continuing upheavals in Iran. There were large
Jewish communities in both nations — many shopkeepers in
Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, were Jewish — and Mossad's infor-
mation was far superior to the CIA's. Most galling to the Presi-
dent and his top aides was the CIA's embarrassingly inept
reporting on Iran, where Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, a
U.S. ally of long standing, had been overthrown in February

1979 in a popular uprising — despite a year-long series of upbeat
CIA predictions that he would manage to cling to power.* The
CIA had rejected the Israeli view, provided in a trenchant anal-
ysis in 1978 by Uri Lubrani, a former Israeli ambassador to
Iran, that the shah would not survive. The CIA had failed the
President and forced the American leadership to turn once
again to Israeli help in trying to anticipate world events. It was
no accident that Lubrani was attached to the Israeli delegation
that negotiated the March 1979 KH-1 1 agreement in Washington.

The KH-11 imagery provided Israel — depicting any military
activity inside the border of Israel's four neighbors — is known
as I&W, for intelligence and warning, and carries the highest
classification marking in the American intelligence commu-
nity. The photographs, once processed, were to be picked up
by Israeli military attaches at a special Pentagon office con-
trolled by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the mili-
tary's joint intelligence service. There was one significant
caveat in all this: Israelis were not to be given any intelligence
that could help them plan preemptive strikes on their neighbors.
"I set up the rules," one senior American intelligence official

* In August 1977, for example, the CIA produced a sixty-page study for the Presi-
dent, entitled "Iran in the 1980s/' that was predicated on the assumption that the shah
would "be an active participant in Iranian life well into the 1980s." Five months later,
Carter, to his everlasting embarrassment, publicly toasted Iran at a 1977 New Year's
Eve state dinner in Tehran as "an island of stability in a turbulent corner of the
world."

A SECRET AGREEMENT 7

recalled. "The system was designed to provide [the Israelis]
with everything they could possibly use within [the one-hun-
dred-mile] striking distance. If it was inside Syria or Egypt,
they got it all. If it was Iraq, Pakistan, or Libya, they didn't."

The official added, however, that he and his colleagues antici-
pated from the outset that the Israelis would do everything
possible to get around the restrictions of the agreement. One of
the immediate Israeli arguments was that the limitations
should not apply to the joint enemy of the United States and
Israel — the Soviet Union. In the months ahead, there would be
constant Israeli pressure for access to satellite intelligence on
the Soviet supply lines to Syria and the Soviet involvement in
the training of Iraqi combat divisions in western Iraq. Those
requests were flatly turned down by the Carter administration.

Nonetheless, Israel was once again an essential ally, and even
if it could not get unfettered access to KH-11 imagery, the 1979
agreement did include language permitting Israel to make spe-
cific requests for satellite intelligence. Each request would be
handled on a case-by-case basis.

The package was too much for British intelligence officials,
involved Americans recalled, who were described as "mad as
hell" about Israel's being provided with the chance to obtain
intelligence that they — World War II allies and fellow members
of NATO — could not get.*

* The British were denied full access, American officials explained, in part because
of concern about what turned out to be a major leak inside the British communications
intelligence establishment, known as GCHQJfor Government Communications Head-
quarters). American intelligence officials had learned by the end of the Carter adminis-
tration that the existence and capability of the KH-11 system were known to the
Soviets, and there were suspicions that someone in a senior position in British intelli-
gence was funneling vast amounts of technical information to Moscow. In the fall of
1982, a former high-level GCHQ^employee named Geoffrey A. Prime, of Cheltenham,
was arrested on sex charges, and he subsequently confessed to spying for the Soviets.
Prime, who was sentenced to a thirty-five-year jail term, was said by British authorities
to have had access to "matters of the utmost secrecy." There were British newspaper
reports that senior British officials had known of Prime's betrayal for two years before
the arrest but had not told their American counterparts. The incident led to inevitable
tension between the intelligence services of the two allies. "We were holding back the
Brits for a definite reason," one American said. "We knew they had a real problem
there and we were very, very sensitive about what we gave them." The stern American
position was more than a little offset by the fact that a junior CIA clerk named William
T. Kampiles had been sentenced to forty years in jail in 1978 after his conviction for the
sale of a top-secret KH-1 1 technical manual to the Soviets. Kampiles received $3,000 for
the manual, which included no KH-11 photographs — and thus presumably did not
reveal just how good the satellite's optics could be. The trial of Kampiles raised a

8 THE SAMSON OPTION

Israel, as the British may have suspected, did have a secret
agenda in its constant maneuvering for KH-11 access, but that
agenda only became clear to a few top Reagan administration
policymakers in the fall of 1981. The unraveling began with a
bombing raid in Iraq.

It was a Sunday afternoon in early June 1981, and Richard V.
Allen, President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser,
was taking it easy, sipping iced tea on the sundeck of his subur-
ban Virginia home and shuffling through a week's worth of
unread cables, many of them highly classified.

An aide in the White House situation room, which is staffed
around the clock, telephoned to report that the Israelis had
informed Washington that they had successfully bombed the
Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak, twelve miles southeast of Bagh-
dad. Allen immediately telephoned Reagan, who was spending
the weekend at the presidential retreat at Camp David, in the
nearby Catoctin Mountains of Maryland.

The President, he was told, had just boarded his helicopter
for the trip back to the White House. "Get him off," Allen
ordered. It was, after all, the new administration's first Middle
East crisis. The President took the telephone call amid the
background thumping of the helicopter blades.

"Mr. President, the Israelis just took out a nuclear reactor in
Iraq with F-i6s." Israel, aided by long-term, low-interest Amer-
ican credits, had been authorized in 1975 to begin the purchase
of seventy-five F-i6s "for defensive purposes only."

"What do you know about it?"

"Nothing, sir. I'm waiting for a report."

"Why do you suppose they did it?"

The President let his rhetorical question hang for a moment,
Allen recalled, and then added:

"Well. Boys will be boys."*

number of embarrassing questions about security at CIA headquarters, where
Kampiles worked; at least sixteen other KH-11 technical manuals were missing, and
there was testimony to the effect that Kampiles — and others, if they wished — were able
to leave the premises without any security check.

* Moments later, Allen added, Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig, Jr., who had
competed from inauguration day with all senior officials for influence in the adminis-
tration, telephoned and excitedly demanded to know where the then-airborne Presi-

A SECRET AGREEMENT 9

The next morning, according to Allen, there was a meeting
of Reagan's high command at which Secretary of Defense Cas-
par Weinberger proposed canceling the F-16 aircraft sale. Oth-
ers at the meeting, including Vice President George Bush and
Chief of Staff James A. Baker III, agreed that some sanctions
against Israel were essential. Reagan glanced at Allen at one
point and with a gesture made it clear he had no intention of
taking any such step: "He rolled his eyes at me," Allen said.

The President's private acceptance of the raid was not re-
flected in the administration's public actions. That afternoon
the State Department issued a statement, said to have been
cleared by the President and Secretary of State Alexander M.
Haig, Jr., formally condemning the bombing, "which cannot
but seriously add to the already tense situation in the area."
Nonetheless, recalled Allen, "Reagan was delighted . . . very
satisfied" by the attack on the reactor at Osirak. "It showed that
the Israelis had claws, a sense of strategy, and were able to take
care of problems before they developed. Anyway, what did
Israel hurt?" Haig similarly was forbearing in private.

The Israeli bombing triggered worldwide protest, and a few
days later the White House announced the suspension of a
scheduled delivery of four more F-i6s, a continuation of the 1975
sale. Two months later, with little fanfare, the administration's
real policy emerged: the suspension was lifted and the aircraft
were delivered without incident.

There was controversy inside Israel, too, over the bombing,
which had been debated at the highest levels of the Israeli gov-
ernment since late 1979. Yitzhak Hofi, the director of Mossad,
and Major General Yehoshua Saguy, chief of military intelli-
gence, both opposed the attack, primarily because there was no
evidence that Iraq was as yet capable of building a bomb.* They

dent was: "Dick, I've got to talk to him right away." Allen asked why. "I've just got to
talk to him." "Is it about the reactor?" Haig said yes. Allen said he was too late: he had
just briefed Reagan. "What?" exclaimed Haig. "How did you find out?" Allen laughed
at the recollection and added that Haig wouldn't know it, but he had wasted his time in
rushing to tell Reagan: "The fact is you couldn't score brownie points that way. Ronald
Reagan never remembered who told him first."

* That issue also was hotly debated inside the American intelligence community,
whose experts on nonproliferation did not have "complete information" — as one in-
volved official put it — about Iraq's capabilities. After the Israeli strike, the American

10 THE SAMSON OPTION

were joined in futile dissent by Yigael Yadin, the deputy prime
minister. At a late-1980 planning session, Saguy continued to
inveigh against the mission, arguing that the adverse reaction
in Washington would be a more serious national security threat
to Israel than was the Iraqi reactor.* He took exception to the
view that any Israeli military steps to avoid a "second Holo-
caust" were permissible. Saguy suffered for his dissent; the
chief of military intelligence was not told of the mission until
June 4, three days before it was scheduled to take place. Saguy
responded by renouncing any responsibility for the raid and
threatening — briefly — to withhold intelligence.

The mission planners, anxious to avoid international protest,
had gone to extremes to mask the operation: it was hoped that
Iraq and the rest of the world would be unable to fix blame for
the bombing on the unmarked Israeli Air Force planes. The
attack had been carried out, as planned, in two minutes, and
the likelihood of any detection was slight. But Menachem Be-
gin, buoyed by the success, stunned his colleagues on June 8 by
unilaterally announcing the Israeli coup. On the next day, as
Israel was besieged with protests, the prime minister defended
the operation and vowed that Israel was ready to strike again, if
necessary, to prevent an enemy from developing the atomic
bomb. "If the nuclear reactor had not been destroyed," Begin
said, "another Holocaust would have happened in the history
of the Jewish people. There will never be another Holocaust.
. . . Never again! Never again!"

Two days later, at a British diplomatic reception, Begin
again shocked the senior officials of his government, as well as
the intelligence community, by bragging that the Israeli planes
also had destroyed a secret facility buried forty meters — 130 feet
— below the reactor at Osirak that was to serve as the assembly
point for the manufacture of Iraqi nuclear bombs. The ap-
palled Israeli officials knew that Begin's remarks were descrip-

experts concluded that Israel had bombed only one of two major targets at the site; it
had destroyed the reactor as planned but left the nearby reprocessing plant untouched.
It was in the reprocessing facility that plutonium could be chemically recovered from
spent reactor fuel rods.

* Many in the Israeli military also were glad to see Iraq sink hundreds of millions of
dollars into the reactor rather than purchasing more tanks, planes, and other conven-
tional arms.

A SECRET AGREEMENT I I

tive not of the nonexistent underground weapons facility at
Osirak, but of one that did exist in Israel. Begin also told news-
men at the reception that the Iraqi government had hidden the
facility from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),
which had inspected the reactor at Osirak in January 1981, un-
der provisions of the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to
which Iraq was a party.

Israeli government spokesmen attempted to recoup the next
day by telling newsmen that Begin had misspoken; the under-
ground facility was only four meters, not forty, below the sur-
face. The government's worst fears, however, were not
publicly realized in the subsequent days and weeks: Israel's big-
gest secret remained a secret.*

By 1981, Israeli scientists and engineers had been manufactur-
ing nuclear bombs for thirteen years at a remote site known as
Dimona, located in the barren Negev region south of Jerusa-
lem. Aided by the French, Israel had constructed a nuclear re-
actor as well as a separate facility — hidden underground — for
the complex process of chemically separating the reactor's most
important by-product: weapons-grade plutonium. Begin had
visited the underground facility at Dimona at least once since
becoming prime minister in 1977 an d> Israeli officials told me,
had been provided in the days before the raid at Osirak with a
detailed memorandum about it. The officials suggested that Be-
gin, in his public remarks, had simply transferred what he had
seen and read about Dimona to Osirak. "He confused one with
the other," said one Israeli, acknowledging that his interpreta-
tion was a charitable one.

Yitzhak Hofi, the Mossad chief, was not as charitable. Two
weeks after the Osirak bombing, he gave an unprecedented
newspaper interview — Hofi was cited only by title in the arti-
cle, under the rules of Israeli censorship — to complain about
politicians who were compromising secret intelligence. There
was no doubt in the Israeli intelligence community about
which politician Hofi was criticizing.

* Some American intelligence analysts instantly understood that Begin had made a
mistake, but their reports were highly classified and never reached the public.

12 THE SAMSON OPTION

The secrets of Dimona may have been safe from the Western
press, but Dimona itself was facing a much more immediate
threat. Israeli officials acknowledged that their intelligence ser-
vices saw evidence in the days after the June 7 raid that Iraq,
obviously seeking revenge, had begun moving some of its So-
viet-supplied Scud missiles closer to the Iraq-Jordan border. If
the Scuds were to be moved farther west into Jordan, Dimona
would be in range of a retaliatory strike by the Iraqis. Unlike
the reactor at Osirak, which had not yet begun full-scale opera-
tion, Dimona had operated around the clock for eight months a
year to produce and reprocess weapons-grade plutonium for
nuclear weapons. An Iraqi strike could scatter deadly radioac-
tive contamination for dozens of miles.

Well before the bombing at Osirak, however, Israeli officials
had ordered the dome-shaped reactor and underground
reprocessing plant at Dimona to cease all operations; both were
kept out of service through the end of the year. The Israeli Air
Force was also instructed to keep intelligence aircraft in the sky
on a twenty-four-hour alert. There is no evidence that Wash-
ington saw or understood any of the Israeli defensive actions.

A few British intelligence officials immediately suspected
that Israel had used the high-resolution KH-11 photography to
target Osirak, and they complained to their American counter-
parts about it. In essence, one involved American recalled, they
were saying, "We told you so." The brilliant reputation of the
KH-11 system was reinforced, ironically, by Israel's successful
raid: high-resolution satellite photographs of the destroyed re-
search reactor were on the desks of Washington decision-mak-
ers within a few hours of the mission.

The British were right, as a subsequent highly secret investi-
gation showed: Israel had gotten much valuable intelligence
from the KH-11. There was evidence that William J. Casey,
Ronald Reagan's director of central intelligence, had inadver-
tently played a key role.

Casey was an enthusiastic supporter of the imagery-sharing
program from the moment he took office, and early in his ten-
ure he ordered that the Israeli liaison officers be provided with
a private office near CIA headquarters. The goal, apparently,
was to give the Israelis direct access to the American intelli-

A SECRET AGREEMENT 13

gence officers who processed the KH-11 imagery to make sure
that all essential intelligence was turned over. Only Israelis, so
the reasoning went, would know what was important to Israel.
"Casey was prepared to show them a little thigh," one high-
ranking American official explained. "But he didn't roll over
and play dead for the Israelis."

The CIA director, suddenly confronted after Osirak with se-
rious questions about Israel's abuse of the KH-11 intelligence-
sharing agreement, authorized a small, ad hoc committee of
experts to review the matter.* The group was ordered to oper-
ate with the heightened security that always surrounded Israeli
intelligence issues. .

What the review group found was stunning.

In little more than two years, the Israelis had expanded what
had been a limited agreement to the point where they were
able to extract virtually any photograph they wished from the
system. Most surprisingly, the Israelis had requested and re-
ceived extensive KH-11 coverage of western Russia, including
Moscow. "The Israelis did everything except task [target] the
bird," one disturbed military man acknowledges. There was
anger at the senior officials of the Central Intelligence Agency
and Defense Intelligence Agency for what some officials con-
sidered their "very lax" management of the liaison agreement:
"We set up the system and we didn't bother to monitor what
they [the Israelis] were doing," the military man said.** Wil-
liam B. Bader, who was serving in 1979 as assistant deputy un-

* Casey had made his first secret trip to Israel as CIA director a few months earlier
and, according to Israelis, put in motion an ambitious list of joint intelligence opera-
tions aimed at rolling back Communism — actions, Casey believed, that had all but
ceased during the Carter years. These included renewed espionage activities inside the
Soviet Union, aid for the anti-Communist Solidarity movement in Poland, and eco-
nomic and military support — in violation of a congressional ban — for Jonas Savimbi's
UNITA resistance movement in Angola. Casey also insisted upon and apparently re-
ceived Israeli promises of support for what emerged in the early 1980s as one of his
near-obsessions — covert aid to the anti-Communist Renamo insurgency in Mozam-
bique. (A 1988 State Department study placed the number of civilians murdered by
Renamo at more than 100,000, with an estimated one million Mozambicans forced into
refugee status.) Despite the successful visit, Casey was embarrassed and rankled by the
fact that his newfound colleagues in Israel had not seen fit to inform him in advance of
the planned attack on Osirak. His CIA thus had failed to anticipate the first serious
foreign policy crisis in the Reagan administration.

* # Adding to the dismay, surely, was the fact that President Carter, as a security
measure, had, shortly after taking office, ordered a freeze on the number of codework
clearances in the government. The freeze led to enormous complications throughout

14 THE SAMSON OPTION

der secretary of defense for policy, recalled his frustration at
knowing that the Israelis were "edging deeper into the over-
head" and not knowing how to stop it. "You didn't know
where to complain," Bader said. "We knew that these guys [the
Israelis] had access that went around the colonels and the dep-
uty assistant secretaries." If a complaint got to the wrong office,
he explained, "you might get your head handed back to you."

A former high-ranking NSA official recalled his anger upon
subsequently learning early in the Reagan administration that
Israeli military officers were permitted to attend Pentagon
meetings at which future missions and orbital flight paths for
the KH-11 were discussed. "People who knew about it wanted
to puke," the former official said. "With the care this [the KH-
11] got everywhere else, this blew our minds." However, an-
other senior American intelligence officer, agreeing that "a lot
of guys were shocked and dismayed," explained that he was
less troubled by the Israeli encroachment: "It was in our na-
tional interest to make sure in 1981 that the Israelis were going
to survive." This officer depicted the direct access provided to
Israel as "a compromise. Israel wanted to make sure that noth-
ing important was passed by. It needed to make sure it got all it
needed." The Israeli officer assigned to the Pentagon, the intel-
ligence officer said, was only relaying Israel's intelligence needs
to the men in charge of the KH-11 program. The Israeli, in
return, was allowed to "stand by" as the KH-11 funneled its
real-time imagery back to Washington.

A State Department official who was involved said he and
Secretary Haig viewed the arguments about Israeli access as
"an intelligence community theological debate. Why have a
fight? Give them the pictures. It's a confidence builder." It was
a zero-sum issue for the Israelis, this official added: if the Reagan
administration refused them access to the KH-11, they would
turn to Congress "and get the money [inserted into the foreign
aid budget] for a satellite, launching pad, and downlink."

To Richard Allen as well, Israel's manipulation of the
KH-11 agreement was no big deal: "I figured they had friends"

the intelligence world, because many analysts were not permitted access to the infor-
mation — such as that collected by the KH-11 — they needed to do their job.

A SECRET AGREEMENT 15

in the Pentagon who informally had provided the expanded
access.

It was finally agreed in the White House after the ad hoc
review that the photographs could continue to flow to Israel,
but with the initial 1979 restrictions emphatically back in force.
"We were going to narrow the aperture," Allen said; Israel
would no longer be permitted to get KH-11 imagery of the
Soviet Union or any other country outside the hundred-mile
limit. Allen personally relayed that message in the fall of 1981 to
Ariel Sharon, the controversial and hard-line Israeli general
and war hero who had been named defense minister in August
by the newly reelected Begin government.

Begin and Sharon were in Washington in September to
lobby the White House in support of a far-reaching Israeli plan
for a U.S.-Israeli strategic cooperation against a shared enemy:
the Soviet Union. An Israeli memorandum for Washington ar-
gued that the two nations needed to cooperate "against the
threat to peace and security of the region caused by the Soviet
Union or Soviet-controlled forces from outside the region in-
troduced into the region." To meet that need, the Israelis
sought Reagan's approval for the pre-positioning of American
military forces, joint use of airfields, joint planning for military
and political contingencies in the Middle East and Persian
Gulf, and the U.S. financing of a receiving station, or down-
link, for the KH-11 satellite imagery, to be located in Tel Aviv.

The Israeli proposals were understandably viewed as exces-
sive and were much watered down during negotiations over
the next few months, to Sharon's dismay. Sharon pushed espe-
cially hard on the downlink issue, also insisting that the receiv-
ing station be "dedicated" — meaning that the encoded signals
to and from the satellite to the downlink could be read only by
Israel. The United States thus would be in the untenable posi-
tion of not being able to know what intelligence the Israelis
were obtaining from its own satellite system.

It was a preposterous suggestion, and Allen privately told
Sharon so. "It was rough," Allen recalled. "He started bitching
about American aid being Band-Aids and mustard plaster. He
kept on saying, 'You want to give us Band- Aids. If that's what
you mean by strategic alliance, we're not interested.' " Allen, a

16 THE SAMSON OPTION

strong supporter of Israel, said he wasn't intimidated: "I saw
Sharon as a big tough swashbuckler who did a lot of bel-
lowing."

The bombing at Osirak led to no significant changes in the
U.S -Israeli relationship, nor were any serious questions raised
about Israel's need for so many KH-11 photographs from so
many places — a need that risked a breach in Israel's relations
with the United States. Despite the brief flap over Israeli ac-
cess, there were no lessons learned and KH-11 photographs
continued to flow to Israel. Some far-reaching changes were
triggered, however, for Israel.

The French, who had also been the chief suppliers of nuclear
materials and expertise to Iraq in return for oil, were embar-
rassed as well as outraged by the Israeli attack. There were a
few officials in Paris who sought revenge by breaking long-held
vows of silence, and they began to tell about an earlier French
nuclear relationship in the Middle East: as secret partners in
the making of the Israeli bomb.

Ariel Sharon concluded after the cabinet room meeting that
the United States was not a reliable strategic ally. He turned to
a clandestine Israeli intelligence agency controlled by his de-
fense ministry, whose operations at the time were not fully
understood by Washington, and stood by as it intercepted intel-
ligence on the Middle East and Soviet Union from the most
sensitive agencies in America — the kind of intelligence that
Israel had been told it would no longer be able to get. An
American Jew working in the U.S. intelligence community had
volunteered his services to the agency several years earlier; he
would soon be put to work spying on his country for Israel.

It's almost certain that no one in Ronald Reagan's White House
considered Sharon's request for a KH-11 downlink in Tel Aviv
in terms of Israel's nuclear ambitions. Similarly, the ad hoc
review group that William Casey had set up after Osirak to
monitor compliance with the 1979 intelligence-sharing agree-
ment blithely accepted Israel's explanation for its violation of
the rules: it had obtained the off-limits KH-11 imagery of the
Soviet Union solely to monitor the ongoing supply links be-
tween Russia and its allies in Syria and Iraq.

A SECRET AGREEMENT 17

Indeed, there were not many, even in the American intelli-
gence community, who understood in 1981 why Israel had col-
lected satellite imagery of the Soviet Union and why Sharon
was so insistent on continued access to that intelligence: Israel
was itself a nuclear power that was targeting the Soviet Union
with its warheads and missiles.

2

The Scientist

The scientific father of the Israeli bomb, its J. Robert
Oppenheimer, was a slight, pale, chain-smoking scientist
named Ernst David Bergmann, a rabbi's son who was a refugee
from Nazi Germany.

The international scientific community came to know Berg-
mann after Israel's successful War of Independence in 1948 —
the first Arab-Israeli War — as a brilliant organic chemist and
director of the chemistry division at the Weizmann Institute of
Science, Israel's preeminent research facility. He was chairman
of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission, set up in 1952, and, on
those few occasions when he appeared in public, an outspoken
advocate of nuclear research for peaceful purposes. Cigarette
constantly in hand, Bergmann was a picture of charm and wit
at international conferences on nuclear science. His high intel-
ligence seemed obvious. So did Israel's need for nuclear power:
therfe would be no oil available for purchase from Arab neigh-
bors.

By 1947, Bergmann was telling friends that the large phos-
phate fields in the Negev desert contained meager, but recover-
able, traces of natural uranium. Within two years, a
department of isotope research was established at the
Weizmann Institute and young Israeli scientists were being
sent abroad to study the new fields of nuclear energy and nu-
clear chemistry. A joint research program also was begun with
the nascent French Atomic Energy Commission. By 1953, Is-
raeli researchers at Weizmann had pioneered a new process for
creating heavy water, needed to modulate a nuclear chain reac-
tion, as well as devising a more efficient means of extracting
uranium from phosphate fields.

20 THE SAMSON OPTION

In November 1954, Bergmann introduced himself to the Is-
raeli citizenry in a radio address and reported on Israel's prog-
ress in peaceful nuclear research. He announced — two years
after the fact — that an Israeli Atomic Energy Commission had
been established. The next year Israel signed an agreement
with the United States, under the Eisenhower administration's
Atoms for Peace program, for cooperation in the civilian uses
of atomic energy. Washington helped finance and fuel a small
nuclear reactor for research, located at Nahal Soreq, south of
Tel Aviv. The agreement called for the United States to have
inspection rights to the small reactor under the Atomic Energy
Act of 1954, which provided for an Israeli guarantee, to be veri-
fied by inspections, that the nuclear materials would not be
diverted to weapons research.

These were years in which David Ben-Gurion — Israel's
white-maned "Old Man," who served, with one brief interlude,
as prime minister and defense minister from 1948 to 1963 — re-
peatedly bragged to visitors that Israel would build its own
atomic reactor, utilizing its own natural uranium and locally
manufactured heavy water. Nuclear energy, Ben-Gurion
promised, would soon be producing the electricity and creating
the desalinated water needed to make the Negev desert bloom.

Bergmann's dream of nuclear power plants was sincere, but
it also amounted to a totally effective cover for his drive to
develop the bomb. Ben-Gurion was the man in charge of all of
this, with the aid of his brilliant young protege Shimon Peres,
who was thirty years old when Ben-Gurion appointed him di-
rector general of the ministry of defense in late 1953.
Bergmann's Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, as the public
was not told in the radio address, was under the direct jurisdic-
tion of Peres and the defense ministry. Nuclear power was not
Ben-Gurion's first priority; the desert would glow before it
bloomed.

These three men would find an international ally to help
create the bomb and, equally important, would accept from the
beginning that the bomb would have to be privately financed
by wealthy American and European Jews who shared their
dream of an ultimate deterrent for Israel. Any other approach
would make the bomb impossible to keep secret.

THE SCIENTIST 21

Israel's nuclear bomb ambitions in the early 1950s were not
foreseen in Cold War Washington. The United States was pre-
occupied with the Korean War, economic and social conditions
in Europe, the strength of the Communist Party in France and
Italy, fears of internal Communist subversion, and the continu-
ing political battle with the Soviet Union.

There were crises in the Middle East, too. Egypt's corrupt
King Farouk was overthrown in a coup in 1952, and a radical
new leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, emerged in 1954 as premier.
British troops, after a stay of more than seventy years in Egypt,
were on their way out of North Africa. So were the French. By
1955 the French government was facing insurrection from three
former colonies, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria. Morocco and
Tunisia would gain their independence by 1956, but Algeria,
whose opposition National Liberation Front (FLN) was
strongly supported by Nasser, became the main event. The
bloody war, with its 250,000 dead, came close to destroying
France over the next five years and provided inspiration to
Arab revolutionaries throughout the Middle East.

Nasser, with his talk of Pan-Arabism, also rattled the Israelis,
who instinctively turned to the United States. American Jews
were Israel's lifeline: hundreds of millions of American dollars
were pouring in every year. Ben-Gurion had tried for years to
join in a regional security pact with Washington — to somehow
be included under the American nuclear umbrella — with no
success. Israel had publicly supported the American position in
the Korean War and secretly went a step further: Ben-Gurion
offered to send Israeli troops to fight alongside the United Na-
tions' forces in South Korea.* President Harry S. Truman said
no, apparently in fear of backing into a security arrangement
with Israel. The United States, England, and France had
agreed in their 1950 Tripartite Agreement that all three nations
would maintain the status quo in the Middle East by not pro-
viding any significant quantity of military equipment to Arabs

* Israel's position on the Korean War enraged Moscow and led to a rupture in
diplomatic relations. The Soviet Union, which had been the first nation to recognize
the State of Israel in 1948, would for the next thirty years castigate Israel for its "racist
and discriminatory" treatment of Palestinians and ties to American "imperialism."

22 THE SAMSON OPTION

or Israelis. The Eisenhower administration came into office in
1953 with no intention of changing the policy.

Israel tried, nonetheless, to establish some kind of a special
relationship with President Eisenhower, with no luck. In the
mid-1950s, a year-long series of renewed talks on a mutual secu-
rity treaty with Washington went nowhere. At one point, as
Ben-Gurion told his biographer, Michael Bar-Zohar, he consid-
ered offering Eisenhower American bases in Israel in return
for a security commitment. That idea was dropped when the
talks faltered. There were equally unsuccessful strategems to
purchase fighter planes and other weapons, but Eisenhower
essentially maintained the 1950 embargo on arms sales to Israel
throughout the eight years of his presidency. The effect was to
limit America's influence in the Middle East and deny Wash-
ington a chance to have an impact on Israeli foreign policy.
The policy suited the men around Eisenhower, many of them
Wall Street lawyers who thought that America's oil supply
would be jeopardized by arms trafficking with Israel.

Ben-Gurion's private nightmare in these years — as his close
aides knew — was of a second Holocaust, this time at the hands
of the Arabs. Israel's only security, Ben-Gurion repeatedly
warned, would come through self-defense and self-reliance.
"What is Israel?" he was quoted by an aide as asking.
". . . Only a small spot. One dot! How can it survive in this
Arab world?" Ben-Gurion believed that he understood Arab
character and was persuaded that as long as Arabs thought they
could destroy the Jewish state, there would be no peace and no
recognition of Israel. Many Israelis, survivors of the Holocaust,
came to believe in ein brera, or "no alternative," the doctrine
that Israel was surrounded by implacable enemies and there-
fore had no choice but to strike out. In their view, Hitler and
Nasser were interchangeable.

For these Israelis, a nuclear arsenal was essential to the survi-
val of the state. In public speeches throughout the 1950s, Ben-
Gurion repeatedly linked Israel's security to its progress in sci-
ence. "Our security and independence require that more young
people devote themselves to science and research, atomic and
electronic research, research of solar energy . . . and the like,"
he told the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in November 1955.

THE SCIENTIST 23

Ernst Bergmann explicitly articulated the ein brera fears in a
letter two years later: "I am convinced . . . that the State of
Israel needs a defense research program of its own, so that we
shall never again be as lambs led to the slaughter."

Ben-Gurion, Shimon Peres, and Ernst Bergmann believed
that Israel's independent arsenal finally could provide what
President Eisenhower would not — the nuclear umbrella.

No outsider — not the international scientific community, the
Israeli public, nor American intelligence — could understand
the significance of Bergmann's two other government portfo-
lios in the early 1950s: as scientific adviser to the minister of
defense and as director of research and planning for the de-
fense ministry. The Israelis in charge of those posts knew Berg-
mann to be the most uncompromising and effective advocate
for nuclear weapons, the man most directly responsible — along
with the French — for Israel's status by the end of the 1960s as a
nuclear-weapons state. Bergmann and the French not only got
it done in the Negev desert, but they kept it secret, just as
J. Robert Oppenheimer and his colleagues had kept the Man-
hattan Project undiscovered in the desert at Los Alamos.

The young Bergmann had been introduced in the early 1920s
to the world of the atom as a student of organic chemistry at
the Emil Fischer Institute of the University of Berlin. He was
on the fringe of a circle of eminent scientists, including Ernest
Rutherford in England and Marie Curie of France, who were
the cutting edge of what would become an international race in
the prewar years to unravel the mystery of nuclear fission.
Bergmann's colleagues in Berlin included Herman F. Mark, an
Austrian who later became an eminent chemist and dean of the
Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute (and whose son, Hans M.,
served as secretary of the Air Force in the Carter administra-
tion).* "We were not theoreticians," recalled Mark, who during

* Herman Mark was ninety-five years old when interviewed in 1990 at his son's
home in Austin, Texas. Hans Mark, then chancellor of the University of Texas, was
himself no stranger to the world of intelligence and nuclear weapons. As Air Force
secretary, he also wore what is known in the government as the "black hat": he was
head of the executive committee, or Ex-Com, of the National Reconnaissance Office
(NRO), a most-secret unit that is responsible for the development, procurement, and
targeting of America's intelligence satellites. As a nuclear physicist, Hans Mark had

24 THE SAMSON OPTION

his career published twenty books and more than five hundred
papers on polymer science. "We were interested in making
things. The important thing for us was synthetics. First you
have to make something nobody else has — and then you can use
it." While in Berlin, Bergmann and Mark worked together and
published joint papers on the chemical structure of rubber,
paint, and adhesives.

Bergmann's father was one of the most eminent rabbis in
Berlin and a close friend of Chaim Weizmann, the Russian-
Jewish biochemist and Zionist then living in England. In 1933,
when a series of sweeping Nazi decrees made it impossible for
Bergmann or any other Jew to continue in an academic job in
Germany, Weizmann arranged for young Bergmann to join
him on the faculty at Manchester University in England,
where he continued his research on synthetics and his close
association with those scientists racing to split the atom. Like
Weizmann, Bergmann came to the attention of Frederick A.
Lindemann, later Lord Cherwell, a German-born Oxford sci-
entist who became Winston Churchill's chief science adviser in
the years before World War II.

Little is known of Bergmann's defense work for the British
before the war; it is in those years that he first became involved
with the defense of Palestine. One of the Weizmann biogra-
phies reports that the Hagannah, the military arm of the Zionist
movement in Palestine, asked Weizmann in 1936 for a chemist
to help produce an effective high explosive for use in the under-
ground war against the Arabs and the British. Dynamite was
far too dangerous to handle in the climate of the Middle East.
Weizmann assigned the mission to Bergmann, who got it done
and then signed on as a member of the Hagannah's technical
committee. In 1939, the biography adds, Bergmann traveled to
Paris on behalf of the Hagannah and shared his findings with
the French, whose army was then operating in North Africa.

Bergmann left England shortly after Germany invaded Po-
land in the fall of 1939. Weizmann had intervened once again
and found him a job with old friends who owned a chemistry

worked for twelve years beginning in 1955 for the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in
California, one of America's main nuclear weapons facilities. For four of those years he
served as a division leader in experimental physics.

THE SCIENTIST 25

laboratory in Philadelphia. It didn't work out, and another old
friend from Germany, Herman Mark, came to his rescue: "He
had no space. So we invited him to come to Brooklyn." Mark
had been driven out of Europe in 1938 and ended up doing
research for a Canadian paper company in Ontario. By 1940 he
was running a laboratory at the Polytechnic Institute of Brook-
lyn; two years later he became dean of faculty and turned the
institute into a haven for Jewish refugees, including Chaim
Weizmann. "The whole gang came to America," said Mark,
who, when interviewed for this book, was the sole known sur-
vivor of that period.

With the defeat of Hitler, there was one final migration for
Bergmann: to Palestine to help establish what would become
the Weizmann Institute of Science at Rehovot, south of Tel
Aviv. Israeli ambitions seemed unlimited. Oppenheimer and
his colleagues in the Manhattan Project, including John von
Neumann, the mathematician and early computer theoretician,
were being wooed — unsuccessfully — by Weizmann as early as
1947, and were repeatedly asked to spend time doing research in
Israel.*

Bergmann was Weizmann's first choice to become director of
the institute, but Weizmann's wife, Vera, successfully objected
on the oldest of grounds: she was offended at Bergmann's long-
standing affair with Hani, her husband's private secretary
(whom Bergmann eventually married).** Bergmann instead
was named head of the organic chemistry division. He could
take solace, if needed, at the eminence of his colleagues. Amos
Deshalit, who headed the physics division, subsequently was
considered a quantum researcher in a class with Oppenheimer

* Oppenheimer's personal papers, on file at the Library of Congress, show that he
went to Israel in May 1958 to participate in ceremonies marking the opening of the
Institute of Nuclear Science in Rehovot. He also took a military flight with Bergmann
and Shimon Peres to visit the port city of Elat at the southern reach of the Negev,
according to newspaper reports at the time. Israeli officials who worked in 1958 at
Dimona, then in the early stages of construction, recall no visit then or in later years by
Oppenheimer.

** It was Bergmann's second missed opportunity to direct a Weizmann research
institute. Weizmann had been instrumental in the 1930s in setting up Palestine's first
research facility, the Daniel Sieff Institute. According to Shimon Peres, Weizmann
approached Albert Einstein, then teaching at Princeton, and asked him to recommend
one of his students to run the institute. Einstein instead suggested Bergmann, who
didn't get the job for reasons not known.

26 THE SAMSON OPTION

and Niels Bohr, the Danish Nobel Prize winner. Inorganic
chemistry was directed by Aharon Katchalsky, later Katzir,
who was a specialist in the electrolytic properties of chain mol-
ecules and a pioneer researcher in the related field of muscle-
powered robotics. (Like Bergmann, Katzir had a secret life: at
his death in 1972, he was one of the driving forces in the then
flourishing Israeli nuclear weapons program.) There was one
final move for Bergmann, at Ben-Gurion's request, after Is-
rael's Independence in 1948 — to the ministry of defense, where,
under Shimon Peres, Bergmann established the nation's first
institute for defense research. More than forty years later,
Peres would tell an Israeli newspaper reporter that Bergmann,
even in 1948, was constantly speaking about a missile capability
for Israel. "I might be ready to tell the full truth about him in
one hundred years, maybe," Peres added. "We worked thirteen
years together, perhaps the best years of my life."

Without Bergmann, insisted Herman Mark, there would have
been no Israeli bomb: "He was in charge of every kind of nu-
clear activity in Israel. He was the man who completely under-
stood it [nuclear fission], and then he explained it to other
people." Mark became a constant commuter between Brooklyn
and Israel after World War II, serving on planning boards and
as a scientific adviser to the fledgling Weizmann Institute. He
remained close to Bergmann and shared his view of the inevita-
bility of Israeli nuclear weapons research: "We were both of the
same opinion — that eventually Israel has to be in full cogni-
zance and knowledge of what happens in nuclear physics.
Look, a new type of chemical reaction was discovered at Los
Alamos. Whether it's desalination, a power plant, or a bomb
makes no difference — it's still fission."

Bergmann had made the same point in a 1966 interview —
after he was forced out of government service — with an Israeli
newspaper: "It's very important to understand that by develop-
ing atomic energy for peaceful uses, you reach the nuclear op-
tion. There are no two atomic energies." That interview, nine
years before his death, was as close as Bergmann ever came to
publicly discussing the bomb. "Bergmann was anxious, rightly

THE SCIENTIST 27

so," said Mark, "that there shouldn't be too much talk. It was
super-secret — just like the Manhattan Project."

There was at least one early occasion, however, when Berg-
mann couldn't resist sharing what he knew. Abraham Fein-
berg, a wealthy New York businessman and ardent advocate of
statehood for Israel, was one of Ben-Gurion's most important
and trusted allies in the United States. By 1947, Feinberg was
playing a major — and highly discreet — role in fund-raising and
White House lobbying for Israel as well as for the Democratic
Party. He would operate at the highest levels between Wash-
ington and Jerusalem for the next two decades. Bergmann was
in New York that fall and, as usual, joined Abe Feinberg and
his family at Friday-night synagogue services; the group would
later return to Feinberg's apartment. "Bergmann was always
hungry," recalled Feinberg. "He loved my wife's scrambled
eggs." One night over dinner, added Feinberg, "Bergmann's
eyes lit up and he said, 'There's uranium in the desert.' " There
was no question about the message — that a path was now
cleared for Israel to develop the atomic bomb. Feinberg was
astonished at such indiscreet talk: "I shushed him up."

Israel's needs in the late 1940s and early 1950s coincided per-
fectly with France's. Both nations were far from having any
technical capacity to build a bomb, nor was there any internal
consensus that a bomb was desirable.

Ben-Gurion, Peres, and Bergmann would spend much of
their careers engaged in a bitter fight inside the Israeli govern-
ment over their dreams of a nuclear weapons program. Most
senior members of the ruling Mapai (Israel Workers') Party
viewed an Israeli bomb as suicidal, too expensive, and too remi-
niscent of the horrors that had been inflicted on the Jews in
World War II.

The French debate revolved around the Cold War. France's
high commissioner for nuclear matters, Frederic Joliot-Curie, a
Nobel laureate who had done important research in nuclear
physics before the war, was a member of the Communist Party
who was opposed to a French role in NATO and any French
link to nuclear weapons. In 1950, he was the first to sign the
Stockholm Appeal, a Soviet-backed petition calling for a ban on

28 THE SAMSON OPTION

all nuclear weapons. French scientists, despite extensive in-
volvement in prewar nuclear fission research, had been ex-
cluded from a major role in the American and British bomb
programs of World War II, and Joliot-Curie's politics kept
France isolated. Joliot-Curie was dismissed after signing the
Stockholm Appeal, and he was eventually replaced by Pierre
Guillaumat, who had served during the war with the French
secret intelligence service, and Francis Perrin, a Joliot associate
who in 1939 had been the first to publish a formula for calculat-
ing the critical mass of uranium — the amount needed to sustain
a chain reaction. The French plowed ahead with no help from
the United States, which viewed France's Atomic Energy Com-
mission as being riddled with Soviet agents.

Perrin also was important to the Israeli connection. A social-
ist who fled to England in 1940 at the fall of France, he became
friendly with Bergmann — how the two met is not known — and
traveled to Tel Aviv in 1949. It was after that visit that some
Israeli scientists were permitted to attend Saclay, the newly set
up French national atomic research center near Versailles, and
participate in the construction of Saclay's small experimental
reactor. It was a learning experience for the nuclear scientists
of both countries.

In an unpublished interview with an American graduate stu-
dent in 1969, Bergmann spoke elliptically of the ambitions he
shared with Ben-Gurion and Peres for the French-Israeli con-
nection: "We felt that Israel . . . needed to collaborate with a
country close to its own technical level. First it was important
to train Israeli experts. Then we would decide exactly what
sort of collaboration to seek and what kind of contribution
could be made in a joint endeavor, considering Israel's capaci-
ties and resources. Every effort was to be made to keep coopera-
tion from being entirely one-directional."

A critical decision for France, and thus Israel, came in 1951
when, over the objections of Perrin, Guillaumat authorized the
construction of a natural uranium-fueled reactor capable of
producing, after chemical reprocessing, about twenty-two
pounds of weapons-grade plutonium a year. The chain reaction
would be moderated by graphite, a technique used by the
United States and the Soviet Union in their huge plutonium-

THE SCIENTIST 29

producing reactors. Surveyors had found large deposits of nat-
ural uranium a few years earlier near Limoges, in central
France, and that discovery made it easy for Guillaumat and
Perrin to discard an alternative method for powering the reac-
tor — using uranium that had been artificially enriched. En-
riched fuel, if available at all, would have to be imported, since
French technicians did not yet know how to enrich natural
uranium. But relying on foreign suppliers — and inevitable in-
ternational controls — would rob France of any chance to
achieve its basic goal of atomic independence. "France,"
Charles de Gaulle wrote in his World War II memoirs, "cannot
be France without greatness." The decision to produce weap-
ons-grade plutonium would irrevocably propel France down
the road to a nuclear bomb, as Guillaumat, Perrin, and the
Israelis had to know — but the French public and its military
leaders did not.

Construction began the next year at Marcoule, in the south-
ern Rhone Valley. Saint-Gobain Techniques Nouvelles (SGN),
a large chemical company, subsequently was granted a contract
to build a chemical reprocessing plant on the grounds at
Marcoule. Such plants are the critical element in the making of
a bomb. The natural uranium, once burned, or irradiated, in
the reactor, breaks down into uranium, plutonium, and highly
toxic wastes. The irradiated fuel needs to be transported,
cooled, and then treated before the plutonium can be separated
and purified. These steps can be accomplished only by remote
control and in a specially built separate facility — the reproces-
sing plant — containing elaborate and very expensive physical
protection for the work force.

Bergmann's men were able to contribute to all of this. There
was renewed controversy inside Israel over the constantly ex-
panding Israeli presence in France, but Ben-Gurion held firm.
"In 1952," Shimon Peres told an Israeli interviewer, "I was
alone as favoring the building of an Israeli nuclear option. I
. . . felt terrible. Everyone was opposed — only Ben-Gurion
said, 'You'll see, it will be okay.' There were people who went
to Ben-Gurion and told him, 'Don't listen to Shimon; he and
Bergmann are spinning tales. Israel won't be able to launch a
project like this.' They said, 'Buy from the Canadians, from the

30 THE SAMSON OPTION

Americans.' But I wanted the French, because Bergmann was
well known among the community of French atomic scien-
tists."

French officials reciprocated the Israeli trust: Israeli scien-
tists were the only foreigners allowed access throughout the
secret French nuclear complex at Marcoule. Israelis were said
to be able to roam u at will." One obvious reason for the carte
blanche was the sheer brilliance of the Israeli scientists and
their expertise, even then, in computer technology. The French
would remain dependent for the next decade — the first French
nuclear test took place in i960 — on Israeli computer skills. A
second reason for the Israeli presence at Marcoule was emo-
tional: many French officials and scientists had served in the
resistance and maintained intense feelings about the Holocaust.
And many of France's leading nuclear scientists were Jewish
and strong supporters of the new Jewish state, which was
emerging — to the delight of these men — as France's closest ally
in the Middle East.

No Frenchman had stronger emotional ties to Israel than
Bertrand Goldschmidt, a nuclear chemist who had served dur-
ing World War II with the handful of French scientists who
were permitted — despite being foreigners — to work directly
with the Americans doing nuclear research. He had become an
expert in the chemistry of plutonium and plutonium extrac-
tion. He also had helped build an experimental reactor fueled
with natural uranium and moderated by heavy water. As a
first-rate chemist, he had been offered a chance to stay in the
American bomb program after the war, but instead chose to
return to France and join its Atomic Energy Commission. Af-
ter intense negotiations, American security officials permitted
him to do so, but refused to release him from his wartime
pledge of secrecy. "It was tacitly understood," Goldschmidt
subsequently wrote, "that we could use our knowledge to bene-
fit France by giving information to our research teams, but
without publishing and only to the extent necessary for the
progress of our work. That was a reasonable compromise" —
and one that was quickly disregarded.

Goldschmidt was a Jew whose family had suffered, as had
most Jewish families in Europe, during the war. His ties to

THE SCIENTIST 31

Israel were heightened by marriage; his wife was a member of
the eminent Rothschild banking family, whose contributions to
Israel and Jewish causes were measured in the tens of millions
of dollars. Goldschmidt and his wife had made the pilgrimage
to Israel in the early 1950s and been taken by Ernst Bergmann
for a memorable meeting with Ben-Gurion at his frame home
in the Negev.* By then, Goldschmidt was serving as director of
chemistry for France's Atomic Energy Commission; in the
1970s he would become a widely respected French spokesman
on nonproliferation and other international atomic energy is-
sues. He also was among the few outsiders permitted to visit
the completed reactor at Dimona in the 1960s — then a classic
example of illicit proliferation.

"We weren't really helping them [the Israelis]," Goldschmidt
explained years later. u We were just letting them know what
we knew — without knowing where it would lead. We didn't
know ourselves how difficult it would be." The important fact
to understand, he added, with some discomfort, is that "in the
fifties and sixties having a nuclear weapon was considered a
good thing — something to be congratulated for. Not like the
stigma it is now."

By 1953, *he scientific team at the Weizmann Institute had devel-
oped the improved ion exchange mechanism for producing
heavy water and a more efficient method for mining uranium.**
Both concepts were sold to the French; the sales led to a formal
agreement for cooperation in nuclear research that was signed
by the two nations. Goldschmidt recalled that Bergmann him-
self came to France to negotiate the mining sale with Pierre
Guillaumat. He demanded 100 million francs for the new pro-
cess, but refused to describe it fully in advance, claiming that if

* "We had a long discussion about atomic energy," Goldschmidt recalls. "Ben-Gu-
rion asked me how long would it take [for nuclear desalinization] to make the Negev
desert bloom?" — a favorite Ben-Gurion question. "I said fifteen years. He started scold-
ing me and said if we brought in all the Jewish scientists we could do it much faster."

** Israel's much-bally hooed breakthrough in heavy- water production, which in-
volved distillation rather than the previously used electrolysis method, was a disap-
pointment, however. The procedure did produce heavy water far more easily and
much more cheaply than other methods, as advertised, but also much more slowly.

32 THE SAMSON OPTION

he did so it would lose half its value. There was an impasse.
Finally, said Goldschmidt, "Guillaumat told me, 'I have the
greatest respect for those people,' and we bargained." Berg-
mann settled for sixty million francs. Israel would remain on a
cash-and-carry basis with the French in its nuclear dealings.

3

The French Connection

In late 1953, a disillusioned Ben-Gurion, convinced that
Israeli society was losing its pioneering, volunteerist spirit, re-
tired to his desert kibbutz at Sdeh Boker, in the Negev, near
the future site of Dimona. He believed he could revive that
spirit and set an example by resettling in the desert with his
wife. His political control over the Mapai Party remained total,
however — like that of a Mafia don — and the government that
was left behind was one of his creation. Ben-Gurion would be
replaced by not one but two people, for he decreed that his
jointly held positions of prime minister and defense minister
be separated. Ben-Gurion then appointed Moshe Sharett as the
new prime minister. No two men could have differed more in
their approach to the Arab question. Sharett, who had lived in
an Arab village as a child and who, unlike Ben-Gurion, spoke
Arabic, believed that peace with the Arab world was possible,
but only through military restraint and with the possible inter-
vention of the United Nations. As prime minister, he would
begin secret peace negotiations with Nasser.

Before leaving office, Ben-Gurion also designated Pinhas
Lavon, more hard-line than Sharett on the Arab question, as
the new defense minister. His goal, obviously, was to ensure
that Sharett's views would not go unchallenged. Ben-Gurion
also arranged for another hard-liner, Moshe Dayan, to become
the new army chief of staff. Shimon Peres would stay on the
job as director general of the defense ministry: he was a known
Ben-Gurion favorite.

Ben-Gurion's concerns about Sharett did not extend to the
nuclear question. Sharett, as his voluminous personal diaries —
as yet unpublished in full in English — make clear, shared the

34 THE SAMSON OPTION

Old Man's ambition for the "Enterprise," without sharing Ben-
Gurion's confidence in Bergmann. In one typical entry,
Sharett wrote off Bergmann "as a chemist sunk in research and
teaching with no ability to oversee the 'problem' " — one of
many synonyms for the bomb. Bergmann's lack of administra-
tive skills, added Sharett, would "limit and disrupt the hori-
zons of the 'Enterprise' and sabotage its development."

How to handle the Arab question was the dominant issue,
however, and over the next year there was inevitable tension as
Dayan and Peres, in almost constant contact with Ben-Gurion
at his kibbutz, sought to stifle Sharett's dovish policies and his
secret talks with the Egyptians. Scandal broke in mid-1954
when Egyptian authorities announced the arrest of an Israeli
spy ring that had bombed and sabotaged American, British,
and Egyptian targets earlier in the year in what became known
as the Lavon Affair. The goal of the bombings had been to
derail pending British and American negotiations — and possi-
ble rapprochement — with the Nasser government; Egypt was
to remain isolated from the Western powers. An internal Israeli
investigation was unable to determine who had given the order
for the sabotage activities, and Sharett, who had not known of
the operation, accepted Lavon's resignation in January 1955.
Ben-Gurion was recalled a few days later from retirement to
replace Lavon as defense minister.* Sharett remained as prime
minister, although there was little doubt about who would be
running the government.

The Old Man's immediate public mission was to restore the
army's morale and the citizens' confidence in the government.
He entered office, however, more convinced than ever that a
policy of military reprisal was essential; any interference with
defense planning, he warned Sharett in writing, would force
him once again to resign and call for new elections. Six days

* Lavon, one of the intellectual leaders of the Mapai Party, maintained that Dayan
and other witnesses against him in the various internal Israeli inquiries had perjured
themselves in an effort to shift the blame to him alone. He was exonerated by a cabinet
committee inquiry seven years later. Sharett, in his diaries, made it clear that he was
convinced that Dayan was involved in both the original unauthorized operations inside
Egypt and the subsequent attempt to shift the blame to Lavon. Any involvement of
Dayan, of course, inevitably raises the possibility that Ben-Gurion had personal knowl-
edge of the operation and, in fact, had approved it.

THE FRENCH CONNECTION 35

after taking office, on February 28, 1955, Ben-Gurion responded
to a cross-border attack by Palestinian guerrillas, or fedayeen, by
authorizing a large-scale retaliation against an Egyptian mili-
tary camp at Gaza. The Israeli attack, which killed thirty-six
Egyptians and Palestinians, was led by Lieutenant Colonel
Ariel Sharon, whose reputation for skill and brutality already
was well established. The Gaza attack escalated what had been
a series of skirmishes into something close to guerrilla war;
Arab casualties were four times greater than Sharett had been
told to expect. The raid ended the secret contacts between
Sharett and Nasser and resulted in an Egyptian decision to step
up its fedayeen attacks from Gaza. The Israeli historian Avi
Shlaim has written that Sharett viewed the subsequent in-
creases in Gaza Strip border clashes as the "inevitable conse-
quence" of the February 28 raid, while Ben-Gurion saw them
"as a sign of growing Egyptian bellicosity which, if allowed to
go unchallenged, would pose a threat to Israel's basic security."

Nasser responded to the increased tension by turning to the
Communist world for military aid. He traveled in April 1955 to
the Bandung Conference of African and Asian nations and re-
ceived a promise from Chou En-lai, the Chinese premier, for as
many arms as Egypt could afford. In July, Soviet delegations
arrived in Cairo to offer military aid. In September, Nasser
announced that Egypt would receive the staggering total of 200
modern Soviet bombers, 230 tanks, 200 troop carriers, and more
than 500 artillery pieces. Soviet advisers also were promised.

In Tel Aviv, there was dismay. Israel's third temple was in
danger.* Ben-Gurion, still denied American support, turned
anew to the French. The Israelis wanted more than guns. The
French had their needs, too.

In late 1954, the coalition government led by Pierre Mendes-
France, one of fourteen coalitions that held office during the
chaotic Fourth Republic, had granted authority for a nuclear

* The first temple and Jewish state, as every Israeli schoolchild knows, was de-
stroyed in 537 b.c. by the Babylonians. The second temple was destroyed by the Ro-
mans in a.d. 70, although Jews continued to live in the area through the centuries.
Modern Zionist resettlement of Palestine began in the 1880s, and Jews had become a
political force in Palestine by 1917, when Britain, in the Balfour Declaration, pledged to
establish in Palestine "a national home for the Jewish people," with safeguards for the
other, i.e., Arab, inhabitants.

36 THE SAMSON OPTION

weapons planning group to be formed inside the French
Atomic Energy Commission. Senior officials of the ministry of
defense thus were brought into nuclear planning for the first
time. Many French military men had been skeptical of an inde-
pendent nuclear deterrent, but that attitude was changed by
France's disastrous defeat at the hands of Ho Chi Minh at
Dienbienphu, North Vietnam, in 1954, and the subsequent col-
lapse of French colonialism in the wars of liberation in North
Africa. It was clear to many Frenchmen that France could not
depend on its NATO allies to protect purely French interests.
This was especially true in Algeria, where the bloody revolu-
tion and French repression were turning the casbahs and
deserts into a killing field.

In January 1955, t ' ie French government fell again and a new
socialist government headed by Guy Mollet assumed power.
Mollet took a much harder line on the war in Algeria and those
Arab leaders, such as Nasser, who supported the revolutionar-
ies. Israel, which had been intensively waging guerrilla war
against Egypt, was now widely seen as one of France's most
dependable allies. Mollet agreed later in the year to begin se-
cretly selling high-performance French bombers to Israel; the
sales, arranged by Shimon Peres, were from one defense minis-
try to another, with no diplomatic niceties and no involvement
of the French or Israeli foreign ministries. Arms continued to
flow from France to Israel for the next twelve years.

In return, Israel agreed to begin sharing intelligence on the
Middle East, the United States, and Europe with the French.
The Israeli intelligence networks in North Africa were partic-
ularly good, former Israeli officials recalled, because the Jews
there tended to live and work as merchants and businessmen in
the Arab quarters. Of special significance were the more than
100,000 Jews in Algeria, many of them trapped by the violence
and irrationality of both sides. Those Jews were encouraged by
the Israeli government to provide intelligence on the leader-
ship of the National Liberation Front and in other ways to
cooperate with the French.

It was inevitable that Bergmann and Peres would conclude
that Israel now had enough leverage to seek French help for the
Israeli bomb: would the Mollet government match the extraor-

THE FRENCH CONNECTION 37

dinary Israeli support in Algeria and elsewhere by agreeing to
construct a large reactor — and a chemical reprocessing plant —
in Israel? The Israelis understood that no plutonium weapon
could be made without a reprocessing plant, and they also un-
derstood that the construction of the plant would be impossible
without a French commitment. The French Atomic Energy
Commission was scheduled to begin construction in mid-1955
on its own chemical reprocessing plant at Marcoule, and Israeli
scientists had been involved at every step along the way.

Having the French say yes could, ironically, trigger a crisis
inside the top ranks of the Israeli government. A French com-
mitment would force Peres and Bergmann to inform the cabi-
net that Israel was going to build a secret nuclear complex.
There already were plenty of objections from those few who
knew. Levi Eshkol, the finance minister, shared Ben-Gurion's
belief in ein brera, but also was convinced that a nuclear-armed
Israel would be financial madness. Eshkol would hold on to
that view after becoming prime minister in 1963. There were
concerns other than financial among the Israeli leadership.
How could Israel keep the reactor secret? Was it moral for
Israel, whose citizens had suffered so much from indiscrimi-
nate slaughter, to have a weapon of mass destruction? What
would the American government say? Would America con-
tinue to be the land of deep pockets?

The nuclear advocates got a huge break in September 1955.
The Canadian government announced that it had agreed to
build a heavy-water research reactor for the Indian govern-
ment. The Canadian offer included no provision for interna-
tional inspections, since no international agreement on nuclear
safeguards had yet been promulgated. India promised to utilize
the reactor only for "peaceful purposes." There was now inter-
national precedent for an Israeli reactor.

In late 1955, a new Israeli government was formed with Ben-
Gurion once again serving as both defense minister and prime
minister. Moshe Sharett, despite misgivings, stayed on as for-
eign minister. National elections that summer had eroded the
Mapai plurality in the Knesset and provided more evidence
that the Israeli public was dissatisfied with the dovish policies

38 THE SAMSON OPTION

sot Moshe Sharett.* An American attempt, authorized by Eisen-
hower, to mediate a settlement between Nasser and Ben-Gu-
rion failed early in 1956 when the Egyptian president refused to
negotiate directly with Jerusalem and presented demands, as
many Israelis thought, that he knew to be unacceptable. A few
months later, the long-standing direct talks between Jerusalem
and Washington also collapsed; there would be no American
security agreement with Israel. On June 10, Ben-Gurion autho-
rized General Moshe Dayan to open secret negotiations with
Paris on a joint war against Egypt. In July, Nasser, as expected,
nationalized the Suez Canal, bringing the outraged British gov-
ernment into the secret planning for war. Shimon Peres was
now shuttling between Paris and Tel Aviv on behalf of Ben-
Gurion; the line between public policy and personal diplomacy
was eroding daily, to the muffled protests of many inside each
government.

* Pocketbook politics played a significant role in these politically complicated years,
along with the always important Arab question. Within the labor movement there
were three main parties, the dominant one Mapai, the most centrist and pragmatic
faction of Israel's socialist-Zionist movement. Achdut Avodah, the Unity of Labor, was
domestically more socialistic than Mapai, and more hawkish and nationalistic in for-
eign policy. Mapam, the United Workers' Party, was far more dovish in foreign policy,
and even opposed the creation of Israel in 1948 as an exclusively Jewish state; it urged,
instead, a secular bi-national Jewish and Palestinian state. (The three main elements of
the labor movement joined forces in the late 1960s to create the Labor Party.) Ben-
Gurion's Mapai Party had lost seats in the 1955 election to the right-wing Herut Party
in what amounted to a voter backlash by new immigrants, resentful of their treatment
by the Mapai leadership. The General Zionists, conservative on economic matters and
moderate on defense and military issues, lost seats. (The free-market General Zionists
would merge in 1966 with the Herut Party, Menachem Begin's populist-conservative
party, to form the Gahal Party. Gahal, in turn, merged in 1973 — after relentless pres-
sure from newly retired General Ariel Sharon — with three right-wing factions to cre-
ate the Likud Party, which took office in 1977 — ending twenty-nine years of Labor
control of the government.) The most hawkish political factions in the mid-1950s, in
terms of military policy toward the Arabs, were the group led by Moshe Dayan and
Shimon Peres, Mapai; Achdut Avodah, led by Yisrael Galili and former 1948 War of
Independence hero Yigal Allon; and Herut. Both groups were opposed by moderate
members of the Mapai Party such as Moshe Sharett, Levi Eshkol, Abba Eban, and
Pinhas Sapir. Even among the hawks there were divisions, with Begin and his Herut
Party followers believing the primary task of Israel to be the redemption of biblical
lands in order to reestablish Greater, or Eretz, Israel. Ben-Gurion, Dayan, Peres, and
Galili (who played a major and secret role in future governments) were hawks of
Realpolitik considerations — a belief in force as a necessary ingredient of international
relations. They were thus adamantly opposed to the fundamentalist views of Begin and
his Herut Party. In essence, the Mapai Party's loss of seats in the 1955 elections reflected
economic worries as well as a move within the Labor faction away from the dovish
policies of Sharett and toward the more hawkish views of Ben-Gurion, Dayan, Peres,
and Allon.

THE FRENCH CONNECTION 39

That summer Moshe Sharett quietly resigned as foreign min-
ister. He had sought an open debate on Israel's foreign policy
in front of Mapai Party members, but Ben-Gurion fought it off
by threatening to resign. The Israeli public would not learn of
the deep divisions at the top of its government until the publi-
cation of Sharett's personal diaries in 1980. Sharett's replace-
ment was Golda Meir, the minister of labor, whose main
qualification, Ben-Gurion would later acknowledge, was her
ignorance of international affairs. Meir endorsed Ben-Gurion's
argument for preventive war; nonetheless, her ministry would
be repeatedly bypassed by Ben-Gurion, Peres, Dayan, and
Ernst David Bergmann as Israel broadened its involvement
with France.

In mid-September, with the Suez War against Egypt six
weeks away and with no international protest over the Cana-
dian reactor sale, Ben-Gurion decided it was time to formally
seek French help for the Israeli bomb. Israeli nuclear scientists
working at Saclay had been involved since 1949 in planning and
constructing the French experimental reactor, known as EL 2,
which was powered by natural uranium and moderated by
heavy water. Building a similar reactor in Israel was eminently
feasible. Uranium was indigenous to Israel, and there was some
heavy water available locally in Israel; more heavy water, if
needed, as seemed likely, could be supplied by the French or
illicitly purchased from Norway or the United States, then the
world's largest producers. Ben-Gurion already had picked out a
location for the Israeli reactor — in the basement of an old de-
serted winery at Rishon LeZion, a few miles from the
Weizmann Institute.

It was decided to send Shimon Peres with Ernst Bergmann
to Paris. Bertrand Goldschmidt vividly recalled a subsequent
meeting of the French Atomic Energy Commission: "They
came to me and said they'd like to buy a heavy-water research
reactor similar to the one the Canadians were building in India.
They said that when the Americans will realize we have a nu-
clear capacity, they will give us the guarantee of survival. All of
this was decided before the Suez affair."

Four days later, on September 17, Bergmann and Peres had
dinner with Francis Perrin and Pierre Guillaumat at the home

40 THE SAMSON OPTION

of Jacob Tzur, the Israeli ambassador to France. Once again
France was asked to provide a reactor. "We thought the Israeli
bomb was aimed against the Americans," Perrin later ex-
plained. "Not to launch it against America but to say, 'If you
don't want to help us in a critical situation we will require you
to help us. Otherwise we will use our nuclear bombs.' "

Goldschmidt remained convinced years later that the basic
decision to help Israel get the bomb was made during those two
meetings in mid-September. There is no written record of the
meetings, and it is impossible to determine what happened
when. What is clear, nonetheless, is that Israel sought French
help for the bomb — and got it — at least six weeks before the
shooting started in the Suez War.

Many Israelis viewed the conduct of their partners in the Suez
War as a betrayal. Israel's immediate tactical goal in the war
was to destroy the Egyptian Army and its ability to support
and train the growing Palestinian fedayeen movement. The stra-
tegic goal was far more ambitious: to destroy Nasser's ability to
achieve Arab unity. Keeping the Arab world in disarray has
always been a focal point of Israeli strategy, and Nasser, with
his calls for Pan-Arabism — Egyptian hegemony, in Israeli eyes
— was a serious national security threat. The Israelis further
believed that a humiliating Egyptian defeat in the Suez War
inevitably would lead to Nasser's overthrow.

The battle plan called for Israel to initiate the attack on Oc-
tober 29, sending paratroopers into the Sinai and destroying
the ability of Egypt to operate from Gaza. France and Britain
would then demand that both sides halt hostilities and with-
draw ten miles from the Suez Canal, creating a buffer zone.
When the Egyptians, who owned the canal, refused to do so — a
refusal that was inevitable — France and England would launch
bombing and airborne assaults on November 6 to neutralize
and occupy the canal.

The battle plan went much better than scheduled. Israel
stormed through the Egyptian Army and had captured all of
the Sinai by November 4. There was nothing, other than a
United Nations call for a cease-fire, to stop the Israeli Army
from crossing the Suez and taking Cairo. Guy Mollet began

THE FRENCH CONNECTION 41

urging Anthony Eden, Britain's prime minister, to move up
the date of their combined assault, but Eden, made anxious by
the fast pace of the Israeli Army and the United Nations cease-
fire call, refused. The British and French finally landed, as pre-
arranged, on the morning of November 6 at Port Said, only to
stop again when the Soviet Union, then involved in the bloody
suppression of the Hungarian revolution, issued what was per-
ceived in Israel to be a nuclear ultimatum in separate notes to
Ben-Gurion, Mollet, and Eden.

The Soviet telegram to Ben-Gurion accused Israel of "crimi-
nally and irresponsibly playing with the fate of peace, with the
fate of its own people. It is sowing a hatred for the state of
Israel among the people of the east such as cannot but make
itself felt with regard to the future of Israel and which ptits in
jeopardy the very existence of Israel as a State." A separate
note signed by Prime Minister Nikolai Bulganin explicitly
warned Ben-Gurion that the Soviet Union was capable of at-
tacking with "remote-controlled vehicles." There also was a
threat to send troops as "volunteers" into the Middle East.

Anthony Eden, already under extreme pressure to pull out
of the war from the Eisenhower administration as well as from
the opposition Labor Party at home, was the first to break
ranks, informing Paris that he had ordered his troops to cease
firing. The French followed. Israel, deserted by its two allies,
was forced a few days later to agree to a cease-fire and the
eventual deployment of the United Nations' peacekeeping
force in the Sinai.

The Israelis were disappointed by the French and enraged
by Eisenhower, who, so Ben-Gurion had believed, would never
turn away from supporting Israel in the weeks before the presi-
dential elections. There was a widespread belief in Israel and in
France that the United States, considered to be Israel's super-
power friend, had backed down in the face of the Soviet nu-
clear threat.* For Ben-Gurion, the lesson was clear: the Jewish
community in America was unable to save Israel.

* Eisenhower's refusal to back the attack on Egypt had nothing to do with the
Bulganin threat, which was analyzed at an all-night meeting at CIA headquarters and
subsequently discounted as a bluff. The Suez War was viewed by Washington not as an
anti-Soviet or anti-Communist move, but as a last-ditch attempt by two powers —

42 THE SAMSON OPTION

"You Americans screwed us," one former Israeli government
official said, recalling his feelings at the time. "If you hadn't
intervened, Nasser would have been toppled and the arms race
in the Middle East would have been delayed. Israel would have
kept its military and technological edge. Instead, here comes
the golf player Ike, dumb as can be, saying in the name of
humanity and evenhandedness that 'we won't allow colonial
powers to play their role.' He doesn't realize that Nasser's rein-
forced and Israel's credibility is being set back."

The Israeli, who has firsthand knowledge of his govern-
ment's nuclear weapons program, added bitterly: "We got the
message. We can still remember the smell of Auschwitz and
Treblinka. Next time we'll take all of you with us."

On November 6, after learning of the French and British
cease-fire, Ben-Gurion sent Peres, accompanied by Golda Meir,
to Paris. Mollet had fought against the cease-fire but, when
faced with Britain's insistence on withdrawal, felt he had no
choice but to go along. Even worse, Mollet was now going to
have to persuade Ben-Gurion to accept a United Nations
peacekeeping role in the Sinai. Israel would have to withdraw
from the land for which its paratroopers had fought and died.

Peres later told a biographer of his feelings toward Eisen-
hower at the time: ". . . [A] man with healthy teeth, beautiful
eyes and a warm smile who hadn't the vaguest notion what he
was talking about. And what he did know, he couldn't express
properly. There was no connection between one sentence and

England and France — to stanch their continuing international decline. Eisenhower
and his senior aides believed that Nasser and other Third World leaders much pre-
ferred alliances with the United States rather than with the Soviets, and thus were
more likely to become pro-American if the administration disassociated itself from the
Middle East colonialism of England and France. The President was distressed at the
two American allies for continuing to practice what he viewed as their colonialistic
policies; he also resented the obvious Israeli belief that he would pander to the Ameri-
can Jewish vote by endorsing the Suez War. (Eisenhower, as the French and British
knew only too well, was perfectly prepared to act as a colonialist himself— as he did in
ordering the CIA to help overthrow governments in Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954
— to protect what he believed to be vital American interests.) CIA officials recalled
another point of White House concern in 1956: Eisenhower's realization from the secret
U-2 overflights — the first U-2 spy mission had taken place a few months earlier — that
Israel had purchased sixty Mystere attack aircraft from the French, and not the twenty-
four they had publicly announced. No public mention was made of the larger-than-
reported Israeli purchase — the new aircraft were seen on runways — since the existence
of U-2 overflights was then the government's biggest national security secret.

THE FRENCH CONNECTION 43

the next. The only question he could answer well was 'How
are you?' "

One American defense analyst, in a conversation many years
later about Israel's drive for the nuclear option after Suez,
posed this rhetorical query and answer: "What is the lesson the
United States draws from the Suez Crisis?

"It is terribly dangerous to stop Israel from doing what it
thinks is essential to its national security."

Israel's unhappiness with Eisenhower was matched by Guy
Mollet's sense of guilt and shame at France's failure to carry
out commitments made to his fellow socialists in Israel. There
was an obvious trade-off: Ben-Gurion agreed to withdraw his
troops from the Sinai and accept a United Nations peacekeep-
ing role in return for France's help in building a nuclear reac-
tor and chemical reprocessing plant. Israel was no longer
interested in an experimental reactor, such as at Saclay, but in
the real thing — a reactor patterned after Marcoule. Mollet, ob-
sessed with the consequences of France's failure, was quoted as
telling an aide at the time of meetings with Peres and Meir: "I
owe the bomb to them. I owe the bomb to them." The deal was
struck, although it would be nearly a year before Peres would
conclude the final negotiations.* The formal agreement be-
tween France and Israel has never been made public.

Mollet also formally cleared the way later in 1956 for the
French nuclear weapons program by establishing a committee
on the military use of atomic energy, to be led by the army
chief of staff. Israeli scientists were on hand as observers when
the first French nuclear test took place in i960.

Over the next few years, as weapons-grade plutonium began
rolling out of Marcoule, the French strategic goal would incor-

* A major complication for Peres in working out the official government-to-govern-
ment agreement was the continuing collapse of the French governments. Guy Mollet's
government fell in mid-1957 anc ^ was replaced by one led by Maurice Bourges-Mau-
noury. There were last-minute qualms about the Israeli reactor expressed by Christian
Pineau, the new foreign minister. Peres would later tell a biographer that he had
overcome Pineau's doubts by insisting that the reactor — already understood by engi-
neers and officials throughout the French nuclear bureaucracy to be for a bomb —
would be utilized only for "research and development." Pineau's meeting with Peres
and his signed authorization for the reactor came in late September 1957, precisely at
the time that the Bourges-Maunoury administration — that is, Pineau's government —
was being voted out of office by the French National Assembly. In essence, the formal
authorization for Dimona was signed by an official who was already out of office.

44 THE SAMSON OPTION

porate the lesson learned in Suez: avoid reliance on the United
States — and the NATO allies. The nuclear tests in the South
Pacific, although marred by misfires, enabled France to develop
its nuclear deterrent, the force defrappe, by the mid-1960s, with
ambitions — not reached until the 1980s — of independently
targeting the Soviet Union with intercontinental missiles.
Charles de Gaulle would stun Washington and its allies by pull-
ing France out of NATO in 1966. The intellectual spokesman
for the French nuclear program was a retired general named
Pierre Gallois, whose argument, as eventually published, came
down to this: "When two nations are armed with nuclear
weapons, even if they are unequally armed, the status quo is
unavoidable." The Soviets would conclude, so Gallois's reason-
ing went, that there was no military target in Paris or any-
where in France that was worth the risk of having one nuclear
bomb falling on Moscow. A nuclear-armed France would no
longer need to wonder, as did all of Europe, whether the
United States would come to its defense — and risk a Soviet
retaliation — in a nuclear crisis.

Gallois was taken very seriously by the Israelis, and France's
force defrappe became the role model for Israel's strategic plan-
ning — and its ultimate decision not to count on the American
nuclear umbrella. Israel would complement its new reactor
with a major research effort to design and manufacture long-
range missiles capable of targeting the Middle East and, even-
tually, the Soviet Union. The reactor at Dimona was just the
beginning for Ernst Bergmann; he would now have to begin
putting together a nuclear arsenal.

Herman Mark explained years later why Ben-Gurion had
picked the right man: "Bergmann was one of the few scientists
who saw the lamp and knew how to make a light bulb. He
understood that different types of activity would be necessary.
The first part is to prepare new and unknown materials. Then
you make them in ample quantities and store them. Finally
there's delivery — how to put it somewhere."

Bergmann's role in developing Israel's nuclear arsenal re-
mains a state secret today. In the years after his death, as the
Israeli nuclear arsenal became fixed, he became a virtual
nonperson, a victim of stringent Israeli security and the self-

THE FRENCH CONNECTION 45

censorship that such security involves. For example, in a book
he wrote that was published in the United States in 1979,
Shimon Peres eulogized Bergmann, with whom he worked
closely for thirteen years, as one of the seven founders of the
State of Israel. Peres, of course, did not mention nuclear weap-
ons, but he did report that Chaim Weizmann considered Berg-
mann to be "a future candidate for the presidency" of Israel.
And yet Bergmann is not even cited once in a biography of
Peres published in 1982 and written by Matti Golan, a former
government official who had access to Peres's papers; nor is he
mentioned in the English edition of Michael Bar-Zohar's defin-
itive biography of Ben-Gurion.

By the spring of 1957 it was clear that the old winery at Richon-
el-Zion wouldn't do and a new site was needed for the larger
reactor, known then only as EL 102. It wasn't difficult for Peres
to convince Ben-Gurion to locate it at Dimona, near the an-
cient city of Beersheba in his beloved Negev. Money was trans-
ferred directly to Paris from the prime minister's account and
Saint-Gobain, the French chemical firm, then two years away
from completing the reprocessing plant at Marcoule, was se-
lected to build the Israeli reprocessing facility — underground.
As they began work, Saint-Gobain's engineers were given ac-
cess to the initial construction plans for the reactor, and were
stunned by what they learned. The French-Israeli agreement
called for the plant to be capable at its peak of producing 24
million watts (twenty-four megawatts) of thermal power, but
its cooling ducts, waste facilities, and other specifications sug-
gested that the plant would operate at two to three times that
capacity.* If so, it could produce more plutonium than the re-

* The reactor at Dimona did not produce any electrical power; its output is mea-
sured therefore in terms of thermal power. It takes three megawatts of thermal power
to produce one megawatt of electrical power; Dimona's electrical power output thus
would be eight megawatts. The average electricity-producing nuclear power station
operates at one thousand megawatts of electrical power (or three thousand megawatts
of thermal power). The first U.S. weapons-grade plutonium plants, built during and
after World War II, operated at about 250 megawatts. Nuclear scientists have deter-
mined that one megawatt-day of production (that is, energy output) will produce one
gram of plutonium. Dimona's reported output of twenty-four megawatts would pro-
duce, if the reactor were operating 80 percent of the time, about seven kilograms of
enriched plutonium per year, enough for two low-yield weapons.

46 THE SAMSON OPTION

actor at Marcoule — more than twenty-two kilograms a year,
enough for four nuclear bombs with the explosive force of
those dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Ground-breaking for the EL 102 reactor took place in early
1958. Over the next few years, thousands of tons of imported
machinery and hundreds of imported technicians, engineers,
wives, children, mistresses, and cars turned a quiet corner of
the Negev desert into a French boom town. Nothing compara-
ble — or as secret — had been created since Los Alamos.

4

First Knowledge

General Dwight D. Eisenhower's reliance on aerial
photography as Allied Commander in Chief in World War II
was reaffirmed by the exhaustive postwar bombing surveys of
Germany and Japan, which concluded that as much as 80 per-
cent of the most useful intelligence had come from overhead
reconnaissance. Eisenhower came into the presidency in 1953
concerned about the lack of aerial intelligence on the Soviet
Union and ordered the CIA to do something about it. A Photo-
graphic Intelligence Division was promptly set up, and CIA
officials selected a University of Chicago graduate named Ar-
thur C. Lundahl to direct it. Lundahl had analyzed reconnais-
sance photos for the Navy during the war and stayed in the
business afterward. One of his first moves was to entice Dino
A. Brugioni, then compiling dossiers on Soviet industry for the
CIA, to join his staff. Brugioni was another World War II vet-
eran who had served as an aerial photographer and radio and
radar specialist in lead bombers with the Twelfth Air Force in
Italy. He had been recruited by the CIA in 1948, the year after
it was established; like Lundahl, Brugioni was very good at
what he was doing. The two men would remain colleagues and
close friends for the next forty years.

Eisenhower's next major step was to authorize a daring re-
connaissance program — primarily targeted at the Soviet Union
— and assign the development of the revolutionary airplane
that would make it work jointly to the CIA and the Air Force.
The aircraft, built under cover by the Lockheed Aircraft Com-
pany in Burbank, California, and known as the U-2, would be
able to fly and glide for almost eleven hours — covering more
than five thousand miles — at heights greater than 65,000 feet,

48 THE SAMSON OPTION

while utilizing only one thousand gallons of fuel. Special
lenses, cameras, and thin film were developed, enabling the spy
plane to photograph a path from Moscow to Tashkent, south-
east of the Ural Sea, in one take. The U-2 went operational
from a secret base in West Germany on July 4, 1956. Its initial
targets: Soviet long-range bomber bases and Leningrad. Mos-
cow was overflown on the next day, and dramatic photographs
— code-named chess — of the Kremlin and the Winter Garden
were later shown to the President and his advisers. A second
U-2 base was authorized in Turkey; later there would be more
bases in Pakistan and Norway.

It was a spectacular asset: Soviet sites were photographed,
mapped, and targeted, all within a few days, by American mis-
siles and bombers from the Strategic Air Command. There
was, however, an equally essential mission in those first years:
to locate and photograph the industrial elements of the Soviet
nuclear program. Where were the reactors, the heavy-water-
production facilities, and the uranium- and plutonium-process-
ing plants? Where were the Soviets machine-tooling the
nuclear warheads and assembling the actual weapons?*

By the mid-1950s, it was clear that Soviet technology, to
American dismay, had done a brilliant job of catching up in the
nuclear arms race. By August 1949, four years after Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, the Soviets had managed to explode their first
atomic bomb, using plutonium. That first bomb, like its Ameri-
can predecessor, was the most basic in the atomic arsenal — a
fission weapon. Such weapons consist of a small core of fissile
material surrounded by high explosives. The explosives are
triggered inward in a precise sequence (measured in nanosec-
onds), suddenly and intensely compressing, or imploding, the
core. The fissile material goes "supercritical" and begins dis-
charging neutrons at a much faster rate than they can escape

* American intelligence had been unable to locate all the Soviet nuclear facilities in
the early 1950s, before the U-2 went operational, and the Pentagon's nuclear war plan-
ners had to emphasize Soviet airbases and missile fields in their primary targeting. The
1954 war plan of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), for example, called for as many as
735 bombers to hit the Soviets in a single massive nuclear blow. Despite the tonnage,
SAC could not guarantee that the Soviets' nuclear retaliatory capacity would be de-
stroyed, leaving American cities open to retaliation.

FIRST KNOWLEDGE 49

from the core. The sudden release of energy produces the vio-
lent explosion.

Well before the end of the war, Edward Teller and other
American nuclear weapons designers understood that a far
more powerful nuclear device, with fission as merely a first
step, was theoretically possible. The new weapon, developed
under the code name of "Super," was the hydrogen bomb,
known to today's physicists as a fusion device. There were two
central problems in the development of a high-yield hydrogen
bomb: how to ignite the fusion material and how to make it
burn efficiently. After much trial and error, scientists at Los
Alamos developed a two-stage device, with two separate com-
ponents inside a single warhead case. A fission bomb would be
triggered (the first stage) inside the warhead. Much of the radi-
ation from the fission device would be contained in the war-
head case and compress and ignite a special thermonuclear fuel
in the separate compartment (the second step). Deuterium, a
hydrogen isotope twice the weight of hydrogen, or lithium
deuteride could be used as the thermonuclear fuel. Deuterium
is the main fuel of the sun, and is burned there at temperatures
of 18 to 36 million degrees Fahrenheit. American physicists con-
ducted experiments and came to understand, with appropriate
awe, that a thermonuclear fuel, once ignited by fission inside a
hydrogen bomb, would burn at a speed, temperature, and pres-
sure greater than it burned at in the center of the sun. A key to
the hydrogen bomb was the initial triggering of a fission de-
vice, for only fission was capable of generating the heat and, as
the scientists later came to understand, the radiation needed to
burn the thermonuclear fuel. The thermonuclear device, when
successfully tested in 1952 at Eniwetok, an atoll in the western
Pacific, produced a crater 6,240 feet in diameter — more than a
mile — and 164 feet deep. It was 650 times as powerful as the
primitive device dropped at Hiroshima. The Los Alamos team
later determined that the fusion of deuterium and tritium, an-
other heavy hydrogen isotope that is a by-product of lithium,
could produce a thermonuclear explosion of fifteen megatons —
that is, one thousand times greater than the Hiroshima bomb.

The Soviets, at one point known to be at least three years
behind the American thermonuclear bomb program, moved

50 THE SAMSON OPTION

ahead rapidly in the science of making doomsday weapons.
The first Soviet two-stage hydrogen bomb was successfully
tested in 1955, and six years later Soviet scientists detonated the
largest known hydrogen bomb, with an explosive force of fifty-
eight megatons. At its height in 1988, the Soviet nuclear stock-
pile totaled an estimated 33,000 warheads, slightly more than
the United States maintained in 1967, its peak year.

In the beginning, everything was secret — even the existence of
the CIA as well as its Photographic Intelligence Division.

The first U-2 flights over the Soviet Union had provided dra-
matic evidence that the Soviets were not nearly as advanced in
conventional arms as the Pentagon had assumed. There was no
"bomber gap" or "missile gap." These revelations were of the
utmost importance and were immediately presented to Presi-
dent Eisenhower himself, as well as to other top officials. Lun-
dahl, as head of the U-2 intelligence unit, soon found himself
becoming the American government's most listened-to briefing
officer. "I was a courier on horseback," he recalled. "I'd spend
my nights soaking up the lore and then gallop around Washing-
ton in the morning."* The man in charge of providing him
with information gained from the U-2 flights was Brugioni.

The United States also was keeping its eyes on the Israeli
desert. Eisenhower and the men around him, including John
Foster Dulles, the secretary of state, and his brother Allen, the
CIA director, had been infuriated by Israel's attempt to mask
the extent of its military buildup prior to the 1956 Suez inva-
sion. The administration's truth-teller continued to be the U-2,
whose pilots, including Gary Francis Powers, later to be shot
down, were usually assigned to overfly the Soviet Union. But
there were other standing U-2 targets in sensitive areas and

* Lundahl briefed President John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office in October 1962,
after a U-2 overflight produced evidence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. He recalled stand-
ing behind the President, who was studying the enlarged photos — which are essen-
tially meaningless to a layperson — with a magnifying glass: "I showed him the various
pieces of equipment that supported the medium-range missiles, about ten items in all.
He listened to all that and was obviously unsure. He looked up from the U-2 photos,
turned in his chair and looked me straight in the eye, and said, 'Are you sure of all
this?* I replied, 'Mr. President, I am as sure of this as a photo interpreter can be sure of
anything and I think you might agree that we have not misled you on the many other
subjects we have reported to you.' " The Cuban missile crisis had begun.

FIRST KNOWLEDGE 51

especially in moments of crisis — and that description fit the
Middle East in 1958. Egypt and Syria had merged early in the
year to form the United Arab Republic, and the Arab world
was immediately thrown into political turmoil. Muslim opposi-
tion, sparked by Egypt and Syria, led to violence in pro- West-
ern Lebanon, where American marines waded ashore in July to
protect the regime of President Camille Chamoun. The Iraqi
monarchy, also pro- Western, was overthrown in a bloody coup
d'etat and replaced by a military dictator, Abdel Karim Qas-
sem.

Gary Powers and his colleagues, who had continued inter-
mittently to overfly the Middle East, were now steadily back at
work in the area. The CIA's photo interpreters were suddenly
seeing a lot of activity at an Israeli Air Force practice bombing
range south of Beersheba, an old Bedouin camel-trading center.

Photo interpretation was still a fledgling science in 1958, a
hands-on business. The developed film from the U-2 missions
was rushed to the CIA's Photographic Intelligence Division,
printed, analyzed, mounted on boards if necessary, cleared
with Allen Dulles, and then immediately taken to the White
House. Eisenhower remained an avid consumer until the last
days of his presidency, and access to the photographs and brief-
ings often was limited to the President and his immediate aides.
Secrecy was paramount, although the Soviet Union eventually
learned of the U-2 operations and began to complain bitterly, in
private, about the American violations of its airspace.*

* It was widely known that the Soviets were able to track a U-2 flight by radar once
it passed over a border point. Much more disturbing to Washington was evidence that
the Soviets were aware in advance of the take-off time for each mission. The National
Security Agency, responsible for monitoring Soviet signals intelligence, reported —
precisely when could not be learned — that the Soviet military and civilian aviation
authorities had established a pattern of abruptly grounding all air traffic before a U-2
flight was scheduled to depart. The elimination of all airplane traffic, of course, made it
much easier for the Soviet radar system to plot the U-2 flight paths, and thus provided
more time for the intended targets of the U-2 cameras to take countermeasures. How
did the Soviets know the approximate schedule of U-2 activity? The mystery was solved
early in the U-2 program by a group of Air Force communications technicians at Kelly
Field in Texas — none of whom had any knowledge of the U-2 operation or any clear-
ance for such knowledge. The Air Force analysts were able to deduce that a special
intelligence operation was in existence as well as predict each flight simply by monitor-
ing the extensive and poorly masked preflight communications between Washington
and the U-2 airfields. The U-2 communications system did not change, and, one of the
never-ending ironies of the intelligence world, the high-level American intelligence
officer who brought the evidence of Soviet awareness to the attention of the U-2 plan-

52 THE SAMSON OPTION

There also was a continuing and essential need for close co-
ordination between exotic groups such as America's nuclear
planners and the men authorizing U-2 operations. Plutonium
and tritium, for example, occur in nature only in minute
amounts and thus must be manufactured by irradiating lithium
in a nuclear reactor. Among the inevitable by-products of the
manufacturing process are radioactive gases, which are vented
into the atmosphere. The analysts of the early U-2 photography
learned to look for huge or distinctive chimneys, or "smoke-
stacks," as the photo interpreters called them, all of which were
studied intently to see if they were linked to a nuclear weapons
facility.

It was Brugioni who recalled seeing the first signs of what
would become the Israeli nuclear reactor. "Israel had a bomb-
ing range in the Negev, and we'd watch it," Brugioni said. "It
was a military training spot — where they'd stage exercises."
One clue, not immediately understood, was the fencing off of a
large, barren area a dozen or so miles outside the small desert
town of Dimona. Brugioni and the photo interpreters assumed
that the Israelis were setting up an ammunition-testing site. A
new road from Beersheba, twenty-five miles to the north, was
observed, leading directly to the fenced area. Construction
workers and heavy machinery suddenly showed up. The site
was no longer just another point of reference amid the thou-
sands of feet of U-2 negatives flowing into CIA headquarters.
The subterranean digging began in early 1958; soon afterward,
cement began to pour into heavy foundations. Brugioni and his
colleagues had studied and visited nuclear weapons reactors in
the United States and knew something unusual was going on:
"We spotted it right away. What the hell was that big of a plant,
with reinforced concrete, doing there in the middle of the des-
ert?"

The deep digging was another major clue. "After the '56
war," Brugioni explained, "it was all sub rosa in Israel. But
man builds by patterns. For example, you can draw a circle

ners was accused of a security violation. The incident reinforces a basic rule of the
intelligence community: never bring information that is not wanted — such as word of
an Israeli bomb — to the attention of higher-ups.

FIRST KNOWLEDGE 53

twenty-five miles in diameter in most areas of the world and
understand how man spends his life by studying that circle.
You see cattle grazing, hog and poultry pens, and conclude that
people eat meat. You can also spot industries, schools, churches,
homes, etc., by what we call their 'signatures.' The military are
even more patterned. Whenever you build something nuclear
you build it thick and deep. They were pouring a hell of a lot of
concrete. We knew they were going deep."

The Eisenhower administration was sympathetic to Israel's
precarious international position in 1958, Brugioni recalled:
"The United Arab Republic was seen as a great threat. There
was a fear that Nasser would get together [with the Arab
world] and they'd take Israel. It'd have been a real coup if Nas-
ser had taken Lebanon in '58." Eisenhower secretly authorized
the U.S. Air Force to provide fighter pilot training and courses
in aerial reconnaissance and photo interpretation to the Israe-
lis. Some of the Americans operated under cover: "The attitude
was help them [Israel] out — wink, but don't get caught."

There was no way that Lundahl and Brugioni could wink at
the imminent construction of a secret nuclear reactor. They
and their colleagues in the U-2 shop believed strongly in Is-
rael's right to exist, but were equally convinced that an Israeli
bomb would destabilize the Middle East. They also knew that
they were dealing with political dynamite, and chose to wait;
speculation would be deadly. "Whenever you get something on
the Israelis and you move it along," said Brugioni, "you'd bet-
ter be careful. Especially if you've got a career."

The pouring of concrete footings for the reactor's circular
dome was all the evidence Lundahl needed. Lundahl rushed
the early raw photographs to the White House; it was late 1958
or early 1959.* Lundahl understood the rules: he carried no
written report — paper was never to be generated in the U-2
briefings. "Ike didn't want any notes — period," recalled Lun-
dahl. The special secrecy of the U-2 was heightened by the fact

* The lack of any written notes or documents inevitably made it difficult for Bru-
gioni and Lundahl to recall the dates of specific events, such as the date of Lundahl's
briefing on Dimona to President Eisenhower. No declassified documents about such
briefings are available to the public in the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas. The
dates cited herein are reasonable approximations, based on all the available data.

54 THE SAMSON OPTION

that LundahPs unit had been given unusually broad access to
all of America's secrets, including reports from defectors and
covert agents in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. The photo
interpreters also were provided with communications in-
tercepts and reports of Soviet and Eastern European refugee
interrogations, as compiled by special American and Israeli in-
telligence teams. The assumption was that since most of the
nuclear weapons installations behind the Iron Curtain were
carefully camouflaged, the photo interpreters needed all the
help possible. A refugee's random comment about a secret fac-
tory somewhere in the Soviet Union often triggered a major
discovery.

The White House briefings on important issues followed a
set pattern, Lundahl recalled: he would tell the President, usu-
ally accompanied by Allen Dulles, the CIA director, and John
Foster Dulles, the secretary of state, what he knew and then get
a presidential request for further intelligence. The CIA's Pho-
tographic Intelligence Division offered three categories of fol-
low-up. Phase One was the immediate report — presented as
soon as possible, as were the early photos of the Israeli reactor.
A Phase Two report, to be presented overnight, would require
Lundahl's shop to enlarge the intelligence photos and mount
them for display. There would be annotation and perhaps some
text. A Phase Three report called for extensive analysis based
on many more overflights over many weeks. There would be
special assignments for the U-2S, and an extensive series of pho-
tographs.

Lundahl anticipated a Phase Two or Three request on the
Israeli intelligence. Instead, he recalled — still amazed, more
than thirty years later — there was "no additional requirement.
No request for details." In fact, added Lundahl, over the next
years, "nobody came back to me, ever, on Israel. I was never
asked to do a follow-up on any of the Israeli briefings."

But no one told him not to do so, and so the U-2 continued to
overfly the Negev. Lundahl also relayed the findings on
Dimona to Lewis L. Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy
Commission, and a few AEC aides who were among the hand-
ful of officials in the Eisenhower administration cleared for U-2
intelligence. Lundahl's standing orders called for him to pro-

FIRST KNOWLEDGE 55

vide all nuclear intelligence to the White House and then, un-
less directed otherwise, to the AEC commissioner. Something
as important as Dimona was rushed over, Lundahl recalled.

"The way I look at it," Lundahl said, "I reported all that I
knew to my masters. They sit at a higher place on the moun-
tain."

None of the communications between Eisenhower and Ben-
Gurion about the ominous construction in the Negev has been
made public, but such letters are known to have been written.
In July 1958, at the Israeli height of concern over Nasser's Pan-
Arabism, Ben-Gurion privately requested American "political,
financial, and moral" assistance as Israel was standing up to
Nasser and "Soviet expansion." Eisenhower responded, ac-
cording to Ben-Gurion's authorized biographer, Michael Bar-
Zohar, with a lukewarm note telling Ben-Gurion that "you can
be confident of the United States' interest in the integrity and
independence of Israel." Ben-Gurion had hoped to be invited
to visit Washington for direct talks with the President. A for-
mer Israeli government official interviewed for this book re-
vealed that Eisenhower privately raised the issue of Dimona at
least once in this period, prompting Ben-Gurion to request that
the United States "extend its nuclear umbrella to Israel."
There was no subsequent reply from Eisenhower, the former
official said. #

Brugioni remained fascinated by the Israeli construction at
Dimona: "We kept on watching it. We saw it going up. The
White House," he confirmed, also mystified, "never encour-
aged us to do further briefings. It was always 'Thank you,' and
'This isn't going to be disseminated, is it?' It was that attitude."

Brugioni prepared the presidential briefing materials for
Lundahl and knew that the intelligence on Israel was getting to

* Few of the private messages between Eisenhower and Ben-Gurion on any subject
have been made public by the Eisenhower Library. Retired Army General Andrew J.
Goodpaster, Eisenhower's military aide in the White House, explained that the diplo-
matic exchanges between the two were "very closely held" and not available at the
time to even close subordinates. Goodpaster, who also served as military aide to Presi-
dent Nixon, added that while there was presidential concern about "what they were
doing at Dimona," he could remember no "specific exchange about a nuclear um-
brella."

56 THE SAMSON OPTION

the top. "The thing is," Brugioni said, "I never did figure out
whether the White House wanted Israel to have the bomb or
not."

LundahPs interpreters had watched, via the steady stream of
U-2 imagery, as the construction teams (the Americans did not
immediately know, of course, that they were French-led) dug
two separate sites in the desert. There was an early attempt to
estimate how large the sites were going to be by measuring the
"spoil" — the amount of cubic feet of dirt unearthed each day. It
was old hat for the American photo interpreters, who had
watched in World War II as the Germans moved their indus-
trial plants and factories underground in futile attempts to
avoid the heavy Allied bombing. One clue that remained con-
sistent was freshly unearthed dirt: it was always a dead give-
away of an underground operation. The CIA profited from the
World War II experience: its team in charge of the 1956 Berlin
tunnel that was dug from West to East Germany successfully
masked its extensive digging by trucking away the dirt in mili-
tary C-ration boxes.*

One fact became clear over the next few years: Israel knew
about the U-2 overflights and didn't like them. At some point
after 1958, the Israelis, using covered trucks, could be seen haul-
ing away the dirt and debris from each day's digging. There
was very strong circumstantial evidence by then that the sec-
ond underground site at Dimona was being readied for the
chemical reprocessing plant that was essential in order to make
weapons-grade plutonium — and the bomb. The best evidence
of Israel's intent came from an analysis of the striking similari-
ties in layout, as seen from aerial photography, between
Dimona and the French nuclear facility at Marcoule. The
French facility was being constantly overflown in the late 1950s
by civilian transport planes — equipped with hidden cameras —
that belonged to American diplomats and military officers as-
signed to the American embassy in Paris. By 1959, the reactor
and the chemical reprocessing plant at Marcoule were known
to be in full operation. "It was obvious that the Israelis were

* The Berlin operation was compromised from within, however, by British intelli-
gence officer and Soviet spy George Blake.

FIRST KNOWLEDGE 57

following the French pattern," Brugioni recalled. "We saw
enough to know that it [the second site at Dimona] was going
to be a chemical reprocessing plant," just as the reprocessing
plant at Marcoule was separate.

As the Dimona reactor was completed, there was less to be
learned from the U-2 overflights. The U-2 imagery could only
depict what was on the surface, and the intelligence commu-
nity would spend years trying to find out for certain whether
Israel had taken the next step — construction of a chemical
reprocessing plant. American military attaches were assigned
to find a reason to travel to the desert — the CIA station even
offered to buy the wine for any seemingly casual group that
wanted to picnic — and take photographs. Special automatic
cameras with preset lens settings were developed by the CIA
for the attaches. "All they had to do was push the trigger,"
recalled Lundahl. In the early years, he added, a few of the
attaches "snuck in and got some good shots." Later, in an at-
tempt to determine whether the chemical reprocessing plant
was in operation, the CIA began urging attaches to pick up
grass and shrubs for later analysis. The theory was that traces
of plutonium and other fission products, if being produced,
would be in the environment. "A guy would go where there
were clumps of grass and pretend to take a crap," recalled Bru-
gioni with a laugh. "While pretending to wipe his butt he'd
grab some grass and stick it in his shorts."

The Israelis responded by planting large trees to block the
line of vision of any would-be candid photographers and in-
creasing their perimeter patrols around Dimona. One Ameri-
can military attache was nearly shot by Israeli guards after
overstepping the ground rules that had been set up by the
American embassy in Tel Aviv.

The cat-and-mouse game would continue for the next ten
years, with the Israelis shielding the expanding construction at
Dimona while the United States remained unable to learn cate-
gorically whether the Israelis were operating a chemical
reprocessing plant. "We knew they were trying to fool us," said
Brugioni, "and they knew it. The Israelis understood [aerial]
reconnaissance. Hell, most of them were trained by the U.S.
Air Force. It was an Alphonse and Gaston act."

58 THE SAMSON OPTION

There was much more intelligence, Brugioni believed, that
did not filter down to the interpreters: "Allen Dulles would
occasionally ask me if I'd seen 'the Jewish information' " — re-
ferring to CIA agent reports dealing with the Israeli bomb. "I'd
say no," Brugioni added, "and his office would call later and
tell me to forget it." One of the most complicated issues in-
volved the question of American Jews who were also intensely
committed — as many were — to the security of Israel. A few
American nuclear physicists were known to have emigrated to
Israel after World War II; one was a veteran of the Manhattan
Project who had worked until 1956 in the most sensitive areas of
nuclear reactor design. "We knew there were Jews going to
Israel who were telling them how to do it," said Brugioni. On
the other hand, he said, "We were getting information from
Jews who went to Israel and never told the Israelis they talked
to us." Jewish physicists and scientists began returning from
visits to Israel by the late 1950s with increasingly specific infor-
mation about Israeli interest in nuclear weapons. The CIA had
even been tipped off" about the fact that Israel was raising large
sums of money for Dimona from the American Jewish commu-
nity.

By the end of 1959, Lundahl and Brugioni had no doubt that
Israel was going for the bomb. There also was no doubt that
President Eisenhower and his advisers were determined to look
the other way.

Brugioni said he and the others also chose in the end not to
raise any questions about Dimona: "There was a lot of policy
that we didn't know about — and we didn't care to know. We
weren't stupid; we could put two and two together. But the
hierarchy decided to play it cool — and that's the way it was. If
you're a senior officer, you learn to read the tea leaves quickly
— and keep your mouth shut. Period."

5

Internal Wars

Israel's nuclear bomb project was besieged with ene-
mies — from within and without — in its early history. The vast
majority of those senior officials who knew what was going on
at Dimona thought it folly to waste such prodigious amounts of
money on a doomsday weapon that might or might not work
when conventional weapons such as tanks, guns, and aircraft
were desperately needed. The concept of underdeveloped and
underfinanced Israel as a superpower seemed ludicrous. By the
early 1960s, Dimona, with its huge manpower needs, had hired
many of the most skilled Israeli scientists and technicians away
from local research and manufacturing companies, resulting in
a much-criticized slowdown in the growth of the nation's in-
dustrial base. There also were moral objections from a few
members of the scientific and academic community, including
two of the original members of the Israeli Atomic Energy
Commission. By 1957, as construction began on the reactor,
four more members of the commission had resigned, essentially
because they had nothing to do. The only commission member
still on the job was its chairman, Ernst David Bergmann.

Bergmann, David Ben-Gurion, and Shimon Peres were wag-
ing what amounted to constant war — all in secret — to keep the
Israeli bomb project alive. The most threatening problem came
from Israel's partner in secrecy — the French. General Charles
de Gaulle had won a seven-year term as president of France's
newly constituted Fifth Republic in December 1958 by promis-
ing to find an acceptable compromise for ending the war in
Algeria. The war, which de Gaulle continued to prosecute, had
sharply divided the nation, as the Vietnam War would later
divide the United States; all other issues, such as the question

60 THE SAMSON OPTION

of continued support for Israel, seemed secondary. De Gaulle
was known to be emphatically in favor of an independent nu-
clear deterrent for France, but it was not known how he might
react to the profound French commitment to Dimona. It was a
worrisome matter for those members of the French Atomic
Energy Commission who supported the Israeli bomb, and they
handled the issue in the time-honored way of the bureaucracy:
they did not tell de Gaulle what was going on. Contracts had
been signed and money paid, and the work was proceeding at
Dimona.

The French on the job at Dimona were also a source of turmoil.
Hundreds of French engineers and technicians had begun
pouring into the Negev in 1957, and Beersheba bustled with
construction as new apartment complexes and residential units
were thrown together. Housing also was made available to the
thousands of North African Jews (or Sephardim) who emi-
grated from Morocco and Algeria, hired to do the digging and
building of the reactor and reprocessing plant. European Jews
were slowly and carefully recruited from government and pri-
vate businesses throughout Israel to serve as scientists and bu-
reaucratic managers; they, too, were provided with housing in
Beersheba. There was a caste system in the desert, and the
French were on top, as they repeatedly made all too clear.

"The French were arrogant," said one Israeli who spent part
of his career at Dimona. "They thought Jews [in Israel] were
inferior. We weren't slick and we didn't dress well — but we
were bright." Some of the French officials were openly anti-
Semitic, the Israeli recalled, and one — eventually ordered out
of Israel — was found to have collaborated with the Nazis dur-
ing World War II. The French treatment of the Jews from
North Africa who had been hired as laborers was even worse,
the Israeli added: "They would speak of Jews from Algeria and
Morocco like they were stones — inferior beings. It was Nazi-
like." Even those Frenchmen who were Jewish did little to ease
the tension; many considered themselves to be of a different
class and social standing than their less sophisticated Israeli
colleagues. Ironically, the Algerian and Moroccan Jews also
were mistreated by their Israeli employers. One standing

INTERNAL WARS 61

rule was that the Moroccans and Algerians would be hired
only for fifty-nine days and then dismissed, a strategem that
avoided paying any of the many benefits that came with tenure
(the Israeli economy was dominated by the labor movement),
which was reached after two months on the job. After a few
days off, the North African Jewish laborers would be rehired
for another fifty-nine days. "Some socialist government," said
the Israeli, with a caustic laugh. The North African Jews were
"treated like slaves" by French and Israelis alike.

By mid-1960, when there were rumors of a possible French
pullout, many Israelis couldn't have cared less: they'd had their
fill of the French. The Israeli scientists and technicians had
absorbed much of the French technical data by then — many
plans were modified extensively on the job — and the reaction
was, an Israeli recalled, "Go. We'll do it ourselves." Abraham
Sourassi, one of the senior Israelis at Dimona — he was respon-
sible for building the reprocessing plant — endeared himself to
his countrymen by declaring, "Good riddance," upon hearing
of de Gaulle's disenchantment with Dimona. "It was the typi-
cal Israeli attitude — just show us," said the former Dimona offi-
cial. "We'll copy it and do it better."

The long hours, hard work, and French smugness did not
diminish the excitement of being involved with Israel's most
important secret. "We felt great," said one of the first Israelis
hired to manage the construction in 1958. "We were pioneers."
The official recalled his initial interview with Ernst Bergmann:
"He tells me, 'We have a big project and we need the best
brains. It's going to be something remarkable that you'll never
forget.' " Bergmann also assured the young man that his new
job would be good for his career — as good as serving with the
Israeli Defense Force: "He said it'd be 'a feather in my cap. It's
going to be modern.' So I filled out the forms. Took me three
months to go through security." Those Israelis who had been
members of the Communist Party (as many had been before
immigrating to Israel) and those with relatives in Eastern Eu-
rope were barred from employment because of growing Israeli
fears of Soviet penetration, fanned to no small degree by the
growing antagonism between Moscow and Jerusalem. Israel had
been racked by a series of spy scandals by the late 1950s, and the

62 THE SAMSON OPTION

intelligence operatives in the sixty-man Soviet embassy in Tel
Aviv were believed to especially target the scientific commu-
nity.

Providing security for the burgeoning nuclear operation was
a high priority and led Shimon Peres to insist on the creation
of a new intelligence agency, initially known as the Office of
Special Tasks. Its director, handpicked by Peres, was a tall,
quiet former military intelligence officer named Binyamin
Blumberg. The Office of Special Tasks, bureaucratically placed
inside the defense ministry, would become one of the most
successful intelligence agencies in modern history — and, after
Blumberg's resignation more than twenty years later, be re-
sponsible for one of Israel's worst mistakes, the recruitment of
Jonathan Pollard. Blumberg's sole mission in the late 1950s was
protecting Dimona, and he made it a point to be involved in the
details. One Israeli responsible for recruiting scientists told of
having an excellent prospect rejected by Dimona's security of-
fice because of distant relatives in Eastern Europe. He appealed
to Blumberg, who had the power to overturn any bureaucratic
rule: "I had to beg Blumberg to get him hired. We needed him
desperately. He did it — but he said it had to be 'on my life.' "

By early i960, the reactor at Dimona was taking shape, and
many Israeli nuclear physicists and technicians were sum-
moned back from France, where they had spent years in train-
ing at Saclay and Marcoule. The top scientists were provided
with double pay and subsidized seven-room apartments in
Beersheba, space unheard of in those years in Israel. Those
who stayed long enough eventually were given possession of
the apartments, worth at least $50,000, and permitted to sell
them at their leisure.

As the pace and intensity of construction grew, Beersheba
inevitably became an international city. The French presence
was palpable, as upward of 2,500 French men, women, and chil-
dren made their life in the Negev. There were special French
schools for the children, and the streets were full of French
autos. All of this was duly reported by foreign diplomats and
military attaches assigned to various embassies in Tel Aviv.
There were constantly recurring rumors of the bomb, but the

INTERNAL WARS 63

cover stories — usually revolving around seawater desaliniza-
tion or agricultural research — somehow held.

Ian Smart was a young British diplomat on his first foreign
assignment in the late 1950s, as third secretary of his country's
small embassy in Tel Aviv. He would go on to become an inter-
national expert in nonproliferation, but in those years he was
merely curious — and suspicious. "There was a lot of talk by the
end of i960 about Dimona," he recalled years later, "prompted,
for one thing, by the sheer progress of the site. It was already
very apparent on the skyline. And from the road you could see
the cooling tower base of the [reactor] dome and the beginning
of the rib structure. Secondly, there was the French presence in
Beersheba. There was an apartment block they used with a lot
of Renault Dauphins about — all carrying French registration."
The Israeli government, when officially asked about the activi-
ties at Dimona, told the British embassy a series of stories. One
early claim, recalls Smart, was that the area was a desert grass-
lands research institute. Smart himself heard a second explana-
tion while driving with a group of Israeli Defense Force troops
in the Negev. Smart pointed out the cooling tower and an of-
ficer replied, "Ah yes. That's the new manganese-processing
plant."

Throughout the last year of his stay, Smart adds, "I was re-
porting the 'suspicion' that this looked like a nuclear reactor.
But how do you get more than a suspicion without putting a
U-2 over it?"

The Eisenhower administration, as Smart could not know, was
in its third year of U-2 overflights of Dimona by i960, and ex-
panding its coverage. Art Lundahl, Dino Brugioni, and their
colleagues in the U-2 shop at the CIA were now requesting
systematic overflights of the French nuclear test site near Reg-
gane, Algeria, in the Sahara. The French had successfully
tested their first nuclear bomb in February i960; it had a yield
of more than sixty kilotons, three times larger than the first
American test at Los Alamos. And the CIA knew that an Israeli
scientific team had been at the test site as observers. There was
another concern: Israeli scientists also had been tracked to a
nearby French chemical and biological weapons (CBW) testing

64 THE SAMSON OPTION

area in the Sahara. "I wondered," Brugioni recalled, "were the
Israelis looking at CBW as a stopgap until they got the bomb?
We thought they may have a CBW capability." All of this was
immediately shared with the Eisenhower White House, Bru-
gioni said.

The Israelis and French continued to monitor the U-2 over-
flights, but they also continued to operate with the most strin-
gent secrecy at Dimona — as if no outsider understood what was
going on.

French workers at Dimona were forbidden to write directly
to relatives and friends in France and elsewhere, but sent mail to
a phony post office box in Latin America. Mail from France to
Israel was routed the same way. The sophisticated equipment
for the reactor and processing plant was assembled by the
French Atomic Energy Commission in a clandestine workshop
in a Paris suburb and transported by truck, rail, and ship.

The heaviest equipment, such as the reactor tank, was de-
scribed to French customs officials as components of a seawater
desalinization plant bound for Latin America. Israel also
needed an illicit shipment of heavy water — it was impractical
to rely on the heavy-water process invented by the Weizmann
Institute, which was too slow — and turned, as did most of the
world's nuclear powers, to the Norwegians, who before World
War II had invented an electrolysis method for producing large
quantities of heavy water. Norway remained among the inter-
national leaders in the export of heavy water in the 1950s, and
its sales to the French Atomic Energy Commission had only
one condition — that the heavy water not be transferred to a
third country. That stipulation was ignored as the French Air
Force secretly flew as much as four tons of the water — stored in
oversized barrels — to Israel sometime in 1960.* A French cover

* Details of this and many other areas of French cooperation with Israel were ini-
tially reported by Pierre Pean, a French journalist, in his richly documented 1982 book
Les Deux Bombes (Fayard), which was not published in the United States. The essential
facts in Pean's book were verified by the author of this book in subsequent interviews
with French and Israeli officials. Those officials raised questions, however, about the
motives of some of those who had aided Pean. Many of the French companies, they
said, that had been involved in the construction of Dimona in the early 1960s were
working under contract for Iraq, with the approval of the French Atomic Energy
Commission, at the time of the bombing of Osirak in 1981. It was the subsequent politi-

INTERNAL WARS 65

firm, the Research Company for Financing and Enterprise,
eventually was set up to handle the extensive contacts and ne-
gotiations with the Israeli government and various Israeli sub-
contractors who would actually build Dimona. There was no
problem of security among the subcontractors; all contracts
were funneled through Peres and his colleagues in Mapai. The
largest Israeli engineering company at Dimona, Solel Bone
Ltd., of Haifa, was closely associated with the Mapai Party;
Israelis involved in the early stages of construction at Dimona
acknowledged that there was an extensive, and traditional, sys-
tem of diverting contract funds to the party.

All of this cost money, and the huge expense of Dimona was a
constant source of dissent inside the Israeli government, which
was in a struggle to match Egypt in the rapid arms buildup in
the Middle East. Egypt acquired its first Soviet advanced
fighter plane, the MiG-21, in i960, and Israel continued to pur-
chase the most advanced warplanes available from the French.
Both countries obtained bombers from their international pa-
trons, and both were continuing research into ballistic missile
delivery systems. By 1961, however, Egypt's military expendi-
tures had reached nearly $340 million, twice as much as Israel
was spending.

The perennial critics of Israel's nuclear program, who in-
cluded Levi Eshkol, the finance minister, and Pinhas Sapir,
minister of commerce and industry — the two men dominated
the Israeli budget process for more than fifteen years — saw the
Egyptian arms buildup as the most compelling argument
against investing money at Dimona.

Just how much Israel was spending on the bomb in these
years is impossible to estimate accurately, and Israel's 1957 con ~
tract with the French for the construction at Dimona has never
been made public. One rough estimate, published by the Israeli
press in December i960, put the cost of the reactor alone at $130
million. A detailed study of overall nuclear start-up costs was
published in 1983 by Thomas W. Graham, a nonproliferation

cal and economic anger at the Israelis that led a few private and public officials to
cooperate fully with Pean and provide him with documentation of the French role at
Dimona.

66 THE SAMSON OPTION

expert and former U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency (ACDA) official. Graham concluded that France had
spent between $10 billion and $15 billion to assemble its secure
strike capability, including thermonuclear weapons, with as
much as half spent on delivery systems. India similarly would
have to invest as much as 10 to 23 percent of its annual defense
budget in the nuclear area, Graham wrote, if it were to achieve
status as a full-scale nuclear power.

Israel's strategic goal was to achieve nothing less than a se-
cure strike capacity, with themonuclear weapons and missile
and aircraft delivery systems capable of reaching targets in the
Soviet Union. The cost of those ambitions was heightened by
the fact that so much of the facility at Dimona, including its
chemical reprocessing plant, was being built underground.
The difficulties of working below the surface could only sky-
rocket the already high costs of ventilation, waste disposal, and
worker safety. Other significant cost factors included the obli-
gation to pay workers well in union-dominated Israel, a reli-
ance on foreign nationals such as the French, and the extensive
security needed to protect a secret facility. Israel's ultimate
commitment undoubtedly amounted to many billions of dol-
lars.

Ben-Gurion understood that getting Dimona complete
would be possible only if it were not being financed out of the
Israeli budget. The solution was to begin secret fund-raising
for the bomb abroad. Israel already was receiving, according to
American intelligence estimates, hundreds of millions a year in
overall gifts and contributions from American Jews alone.
Sometime in i960, Shimon Peres decided to form a special
group of trusted and discreet donors that became known, ac-
cording to Israeli sources, as the Committee of Thirty. Certain
wealthy Jews around the world, including Baron Edmund de
Rothschild of Paris and Abraham Feinberg of New York, were
asked to quietly raise money for what Peres called the "special
weapons" program, and they did so. Years later, Peres would
brag to an interviewer that "not one penny [for Dimona] came
from the government budget. The project was financed from
contributions I raised from Jewish millionaires who under-
stood the importance of the issue. We collected forty million

INTERNAL WARS 67

dollars." Peres also said that he "brought Jewish millionaires to
Dimona. I told them what would be here." Former Israeli gov-
ernment officials confirmed that at least one group of foreign
contributors was permitted to visit Dimona in 1968, after its
completion.

The $40 million raised by Peres would not be nearly enough,
however. Israeli officials estimated that by the mid-1960s Israel
was spending not scores of millions but hundreds of millions
of dollars annually on its nuclear program, with the Peres
operation producing a small percentage of the funds and the
government underwriting the rest. Ben-Gurion's insistence on
continuing to invest that kind of money in the bomb remained
a severe source of conflict inside his cabinet and the Mapai
Party.

There were reasons other than financial for objecting to the
bomb. Old-fashioned military men such as Yigal Allon, who
had led troops during the War of Independence; Yitzhak Rabin,
the army chief of operations who was destined to be chief of
staff; and Ariel Sharon, the Israeli general and commando
leader, believed that Israel's essential advantage over the Arabs
was the quality and training of its military personnel. To these
men, nuclear weapons were nothing more than a great equal-
izer: an Egypt equipped with the bomb was far more danger-
ous to Israel than an Egypt limited to conventional arms, even
in huge quantities. If Israel possessed nuclear weapons, their
analysis continued, it would be impossible to deny them to
Egypt or other nations in the Middle East.*

Another compelling argument against Dimona was made by
the nation's industrial managers throughout the early 1960s, as
the reactor and chemical reprocessing plant — nearing comple-
tion — continued to necessitate the recruitment of additional
scientists and technicians. Israel was, in essence, facing what
amounted to a domestic brain drain. By the late 1960s, senior

* Moshe Dayan, as one of the few military men who supported the bomb in these
early years, was an anomaly. American nonproliferation experts eventually came to
understand that there was a correlation between the attitude of military officers toward
the bomb and a national commitment to going nuclear. Many senior military officers in
both Israel and India objected bitterly to the nuclear weapons arsenal in its early
development. However, once the bomb joined the military arsenal, as it did in India in
the late 1970s and in Israel a few years earlier, dissent ceased.

68 THE SAMSON OPTION

officials of the ministry of commerce and industry were pub-
licly critical of the reduced level of industrial research in the
nation. Government funding for such research had been drasti-
cally cut back, and industry was lagging increasingly behind
science. Scientific innovations still took place, but there were
few engineering companies capable of turning those ideas into
profitable goods that manufacturers could put into production.
Officials who worked at Dimona in those years acknowl-
edged the predatory hiring practices, with the nation's chemi-
cal industry being a prime target. "We raided every place in the
country," one former official recalled with pride. "We depleted
Israel's industrial system." The only facility off-limits was the
small research reactor at Nahal Soreq, near the Weizmann In-
stitute. At its height, the former official said, fifteen hundred
Israeli scientists, many with doctorates, worked at Dimona.

The first overt sign of de Gaulle's unease over France's nuclear
commitment to Israel came in May i960, when Maurice Couve
de Murville, the French foreign minister, informed the Israeli
ambassador that France wanted Israel to make a public an-
nouncement about the reactor at Dimona and also agree to sub-
mit it to international inspection, similar to the inspection of
Nahal Soreq. Without such acts, Couve de Murville said,
France would not supply raw uranium to the reactor. Ben-
Gurion decided to fly to France for a summit meeting. The two
leaders got along well: de Gaulle would later characterize Ben-
Gurion in his memoirs as "one of the greatest statesmen of our
time. . . . From the very first moment, I felt sympathetic ad-
miration for this courageous fighter and champion. His person-
ality symbolized Israel, which he has ruled since the day he
presided over her creation and struggle." Ben-Gurion, in turn,
found de Gaulle to be a "lively, humane man with a sense of
humor, very alert, and much kindness."

Bertrand Goldschmidt's personal notes of the meeting, pro-
vided to the author, show that de Gaulle, embroiled in Algeria,
was worried about the potential for international scandal if
France's involvement with Dimona became publicly known.
De Gaulle explained, according to the notes, that "if France
was the only country to help Israel, while neither the United

INTERNAL WARS 69

States, Britain, or the Soviet Union has helped anyone else [get
the bomb], she would put herself in an impossible international
situation." There was a second worry: "No doubt if Israel had
the atomic bomb, Egypt would be receiving one as well."

The critical concern for de Gaulle was Dimona's under-
ground chemical reprocessing plant, then being built according
to French specifications: he did not want to be responsible for
making the Israeli bomb inevitable. French help in building the
plant would have to cease. Ben-Gurion gave his view of the
Arab threat, but de Gaulle insisted that the Israeli prime minis-
ter was "exaggerating the danger of destruction that threatens
you. In no way will we allow you to be massacred. . . . We
will defend you. We will not let Israel fall." De Gaulle offered
to sell Israel more fighter aircraft.

De Gaulle came away from his meeting convinced, as he
wrote in his memoirs, that he had ordered all work to stop on
the reprocessing plant: "I put an end to abusive practices of
collaboration established on the military level, after the Suez
expedition, between Tel Aviv and Paris, and which introduced
Israelis permanently to all levels of staff and French services.
Thus in particular there was a stop to the aid provided by us
near Beersheba, for a plant to transform uranium into pluto-
nium from which some fine day atom bombs could arise." De
Gaulle's order, if issued, was ignored. Saint-Gobain's work on
the underground reprocessing plant was delayed for more than
two years, but in 1962 a new French contractor arrived and
finished the job.

Ben-Gurion was pleased with de Gaulle's promises of contin-
ued military aid, but he was not willing to trade an Israeli bomb
for French warplanes. Over the next few months, Shimon
Peres was able to work out a compromise in talks with Couve
de Murville that centered on what amounted to an Israeli lie,
one that would dominate Israel's public stance on nuclear arms
for decades. The Israelis assured France that they had no inten-
tion of manufacturing an atomic bomb and would not do any
reprocessing of plutonium. A compromise of sorts was reached:
French companies would continue to supply the uranium ore
and reactor parts that already had been ordered and not de-
mand any foreign inspection. Israel would make public the ex-

70 THE SAMSON OPTION

istence of its nuclear reactor and continue its construction at
Dimona without any official French government help.

With the friendly summit behind him, Ben-Gurion did noth-
ing to change the status quo at Dimona. Neither did de Gaulle
or the French government. The privately owned French con-
struction firms and their employees maintained a vigorous
presence at Dimona until 1966 and continued to be well paid
under the existing contracts.

6

Going Public

By December i960, John W. Finney had been a re-
porter for three years in the Washington bureau of the New
York Times, covering nuclear issues and the Atomic Energy
Commission (AEC). Finney, hired away from United Press In-
ternational by bureau chief James A. Reston, was considered a
solid addition to the news staff — but he had yet to bust a big
one.

Finney's story came late that month and was, as Finney re-
called, "handed to me on a platter."

The messenger was the Times's redoubtable Arthur Krock,
then the patriarch of Washington columnists, who approached
Finney's desk late one afternoon. Krock was known to young
bureau reporters such as Finney for his remoteness and for
his daily long lunches with senior government officials at
the private Metropolitan Club, a few blocks from the White
House.

"Mr. Finney," Krock said, "I think if you call John McCone,
he'll have a story for you." John A. McCone, a very wealthy
Republican businessman from California, was chairman of the
AEC, and Finney had established good rapport with him. Fin-
ney immediately understood the situation: "They were looking
to plant a story. I was the right person and Krock was the
intermediary." Finney made the call and was promptly invited
to McCone's office.

"McCone was mad, sputtering mad," Finney recalled. "He
started talking and saying, 'They lied to us.' "

Who?

72 THE SAMSON OPTION

"The Israelis. They told us it was a textile plant."* There was
new intelligence, McCone said, revealing that the Israelis had
secretly built a nuclear reactor in the Negev with French help;
McCone wanted Finney to take the story public. Finney's sub-
sequent article, published December 19 on page one in the
Times, told the American people what Art Lundahl and Dino
Brugioni had been reporting to the White House for more than
two years: that Israel, with the aid of the French, was building
a nuclear reactor to produce plutonium. "Israel had made no
public announcement about the reactor, nor has she privately
informed the United States of her plan," Finney wrote, faith-
fully reflecting what McCone told him. "There is an ill-con-
cealed feeling of annoyance among officials that the United
States has been left in the dark by two of its international
friends, France and Israel."

Finney's story also noted that McCone had "questioned"
Israel about the new information but then added: "Mr.
McCone refused to go into details." It was standard operating
procedure for official Washington: Finney got the story and
McCone was able to duck responsibility for giving it to him.

McCone's leak to Finney would be his parting shot as AEC
commissioner; a few days later he announced his resignation
on Meet the Press, the NBC Sunday television interview show.
The Finney story was being written that same day. Finney was

* There is no evidence that the Israeli government ever claimed to Washington that
the construction at Dimona was a textile plant. Those American and European diplo-
mats who inquired invariably were informed that Dimona was a research facility (usu-
ally for agriculture) or a chemical plant. McCone's comment to Finney became widely
accepted as fact, nonetheless, and prompted a whimsical column by Art Buchwald in
the New York Herald Tribune on January 10, 1961. Buchwald told of an Israeli cab driver
who six months earlier had driven an American diplomat to Dimona in search of a suit,
at wholesale prices, from the textile plant. The technicians at Dimona decided to let
him in and pretend that "nothing was going on." When the diplomat inquired about
buying a suit, he was told: " 'Perhaps you would like something in cobalt blue? Or
maybe a nice uranium brown? How about a cosmic gray, double-breasted, with pin-
striped particles?' " The diplomat was measured for his suit behind a six-foot wall of
lead. Another scientist "rushed in with a Geiger counter, a slide rule, and two robot
arms. The head of the plant took a pad and said: 'Shimshon, call off the customer's
measurements.' Shimshon yelled out: 'Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two,
one, oi!' " There were more measurements: " 'Waist U-235; relatively good chest; there
is a hexagonal prism in the left shoulder; the right sleeve needs reactor.' " As the
diplomat left, Buchwald wrote, he was told: " 'Please, kind sir, do not tell your friends
about us because we have too much work now, and if we take any more orders the
plant will explode.' "

GOING PUBLIC 73

convinced, as McCone wanted him to be, that the commission-
er's anger stemmed from recently acquired knowledge, some
new intelligence about the Israelis. "McCone left me with the
impression," Finney recalled, "that they'd suddenly appreci-
ated that the Israelis were lying to them."

Finney paid a higher price than he realized for his big story;
the Eisenhower administration was using him and the New York
Times to accomplish what its senior officials were publicly ap-
prehensive about doing themselves — taking on the Israelis over
Dimona. McCone, as he did not indicate to Finney, had been
briefed regularly on the Israeli nuclear program after replacing
Lewis Strauss as AEC commissioner in July 1958; there is no
evidence that Strauss, who also received regular briefings on
Dimona from Art Lundahl and Dino Brugioni, personally
shared his knowledge with McCone. But Lundahl and Bru-
gioni did. McCone, as AEC chairman, was a member of the
U.S. Intelligence Advisory Committee, the top-level group at
the time, and was, according to Walter N. Elder, a former CIA
official who was McCone's long-time aide, "in on the action
from the beginning. He sat at the table."

What made McCone (who died in early 1991 after a long,
incapacitating illness) join the administration in suddenly re-
acting to intelligence that had been around for years? Walt
Elder, who wrote the still-classified history of McCone's CIA
tenure, described McCone as being committed to the concept
of nuclear nonproliferation and also aware of the convenient
fact that Eisenhower was a month away from ending his eight-
year reign in the White House. There could be no better time
to act. "He figured, 'I'm through and this is my duty — to let the
public know about this,' " said Elder. Another issue, he added,
was McCone's frustration at the constant Israeli lying about
Dimona: "There was an impetus to do them in."

By December i960, work at Dimona had progressed to the
point where the reactor dome had become visible from nearby
roads in the Negev, and thus was more susceptible to being
photographed by military attaches. By this time, too, the U-2
program was in disarray: its decline began in May i960, when

74 THE SAMSON OPTION

Gary Francis Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union.
Premier Nikita Khrushchev's rage at the incident, which
caught the White House in a series of lies, ruined Eisenhower's
Paris summit meieting scheduled for a few weeks later and led
him to order an end to all reconnaissance flights over Russia.
Arthur Lundahl recalled those months as being "full of finger-
pointing and turbulence." The Powers fiasco did not diminish
the fact that Eisenhower and Khrushchev had made steady
progress over the previous year in drafting a comprehensive
treaty banning all nuclear tests; such testing was suspended by
both nations until September 1961. That success had led to an
overall heightened sensitivity about nuclear proliferation, and
also may have played a role in the sudden concern over
Dimona. Another factor may have been timing: with the ad-
ministration coming to an end, there was no longer any com-
pelling reason to worry about domestic pressure from Jewish
lobbying groups.

Whatever the reason, even before McCone's summoning of
John Finney, there was a coordinated effort at the top levels of
government to make Israel acknowledge what it was doing at
Dimona. Such unanimity of purpose and widespread access to
sensitive intelligence about Dimona wouldn't happen again —
ever.

By the date of McCone's appearance on Meet the Press, Wash-
ington had been awash for at least ten days with new informa-
tion about Dimona and a new desire to do something about it.
Even Christian A. Herter, the usually detached and preoccu-
pied secretary of state, was in on it. Armin H. Meyer, a senior
foreign service officer soon to be posted as ambassador to Leba-
non, recalled his surprise in early December at finding Herter
seemingly upset upon being given a photograph of the reactor,
as taken from a highway. Herter, the under secretary who had
been given the top job after the death of John Foster Dulles in
May 1959, had gone so far as to call in Avraham Harman, the
Israeli ambassador, for an explanation. "I remember being
amazed that he felt he could take on the Israelis," Meyer said.
"It was the only time I really saw him burn. Something must

GOING PUBLIC 75

have happened in the nuclear field that gave him the safety to
raise the issue. He felt he was on sacred ground."*

Herter, in fact, had done some independent checking of his
own. Shortly after receiving the intelligence, he asked an aide
to approach the French and find out whether they indeed were
helping the Israelis. The aide, Philip J. Farley, had been around
— he'd served since 1956 as a special assistant to John Foster
Dulles for arms control — and knew that a direct approach
would be "pointless." Farley quietly raised the issue with a
deputy to the French ambassador and came away convinced, as
he reported to Herter, that the fears about a French connection
were warranted. The ambassador's deputy "said all the right
things," Farley recalled, referring to his pro forma denials,
"but the way he acted . . ." The next step was a discussion
with the ambassador, who insisted that Dimona was "merely a
research reactor." Farley was enough of an expert to know that
the reactor at Dimona was obviously too large for pure re-
search, and, after a discussion in the National Security Council,
Herter was instructed by the White House to give a formal
diplomatic protest (known as a demarche) to the French. As
luck would have it, Couve de Murville, the French foreign min-
ister, was in Washington for a meeting. He was approached,
Farley recalled, but assured the State Department that the Is-
raeli reactor was benign and that any plutonium generated in
its operation would be returned to France for safekeeping. "He
just plain lied to us," said Farley, still indignant in an interview
thirty years later. At the time, of course, Farley added, he and
his colleagues in the bureaucracy did not begin to realize the
extent of Couve de Murville's dissembling; they had no idea
that it was France that had made the Israeli bomb possible.

The summoning of Israeli Ambassador Harman had taken
place on December 9; within days, the administration had esca-

* Herter had stunned America's European allies during his April 1959 confirmation
hearings by declaring that he could not "conceive of any President engaging in all-out
nuclear war unless we were in danger of all-out devastation ourselves." The statement,
while undoubtedly correct, played into the hands of de Gaulle's ambitions for the force
de frappe. The historian Richard J. Barnet, writing about Herter's statement in 1983,
commented: "In a sentence the new secretary had blown away the solemn assurances
of a decade."

76 THE SAMSON OPTION

lated the question of what was going on at Dimona to a near-
crisis level. House and Senate members of the Joint Committee
on Atomic Energy were summoned urgently from Christmas
recess to a secret briefing on Dimona by CIA and State Depart-
ment officials. CIA Director Allen Dulles also arranged for
President-elect John F. Kennedy be be briefed. It seems clear
that none of this — the demarche to the French, the briefing of
the joint committee, and the briefing of the President-elect —
could have taken place without the explicit approval of Dwight
Eisenhower.

Washington also was sharing its concern with its allies, and it
was that communication that moved the diplomatic concern
about Dimona onto the front pages. The story broke in the
world's press on December 16, when the London Daily Express,
a tabloid, published a major story saying that "British and
American intelligence authorities believe that the Israelis are
well on the way to building their first experimental nuclear
bomb." The dispatch was written by Chapman Pincher,
known for his close ties to the British intelligence and nuclear
communities. Pincher had indeed gotten a tip from a senior
figure in British atomic weapons research, whose concern was
that an Israeli bomb would necessarily be "dirty" — that is, gen-
erate a lot of radioactive fallout. Pincher, in a telephone inter-
view, said that his next step was to call an old contact in
Mossad and verify the story. "I had a very good connection to
Mossad," Pincher said. "I had good Jewish friends here [in
London]. They did make use of me for quite a long time —
feeding me anti-Palestinian information." Pincher's relation-
ship with Mossad was predicated on the understanding that, as
he recalled, "if they ever fed me a bum steer, I'd blow them out
of the water."

McCone's leak to John Finney, his strong statements on Meet
the Press, and his later actions in the Kennedy administration —
he replaced Allen Dulles as CIA director in the fall of 1961 —
would get him labeled by some as anti-Semitic. There was no
known basis for such allegations, however: McCone, as he
would demonstrate anew as CIA director, was dead set against
any nuclear proliferation and repeatedly railed against the

GOING PUBLIC 77

French as well as the Israelis. He also was offended by the
Israeli and French lying about their collaboration in the Negev,
and he viewed Washington's acquiescence in those lies with
contempt. Myron B. Kratzer, the AEC's director of interna-
tional affairs in December i960, recalled being telephoned a few
hours before McCone's farewell appearance on Meet the Press by
a State Department colleague and told to urge McCone to
downplay the Israeli issue. Kratzer relayed the request, and
McCone blew up. "He said to me," Kratzer recalls, " 'I haven't
lived all these years to go out of office telling anything less than
the truth.' "* One of McCone's goals, Kratzer says, was to force
the Israelis to accept international inspection of Dimona.

In Israel, Deputy Minister of Defense Shimon Peres, fore-
warned by Ambassador Harman and perhaps by Mossad, be-
gan working up the cover story. There was a widespread
suspicion in the prime minister's office that the truth about
Dimona had been leaked to the British press by some of
the men around de Gaulle; the French had continued to urge
the Israelis to make public the existence of the reactor since the
June summit meeting between de Gaulle and Ben-Gurion. Be-
trayal by an ally was, for the Israelis, always the expected; Pe-
res's immediate goal was to keep his and Ben-Gurion's dream
on track. The stakes were high: any extended publicity about
Dimona threatened one of Israel's most significant interna-
tional successes — the purchase from Norway the year before of
twenty tons of heavy water, to be used, Israel had assured the
Norwegians, to fuel what was said to be an experimental nu-
clear power station at Dimona. Norway had been given a
pledge of peaceful use and the right to inspect the heavy water,
which it would do only once in the next thirty-two years. The
twenty-ton purchase of heavy water was obviously much more
than required to fuel a twenty-four-megawatt reactor; a Nor-

* McCone, perhaps anticipating a return to public life, did play the game nonethe-
less, saying on television that there was only "informal and unofficial information"
about Dimona. He also said he did not know whether any of the nuclear powers
(France, England, the United States, and the Soviet Union) had aided Israel. McCone's
discretion was made easier, of course, by the knowledge of the Pincher dispatch and
the fact that the New York Times was a day away from publishing John Finney's much
more complete story.

78 THE SAMSON OPTION

wegian complaint, with its resulting publicity, would be devas-
tating in the wake of the worldwide protests over Dimona.

On December 20, Peres met with those defense ministry staff
aides who knew of Dimona and summarized the various cover
stories that would become David Ben-Gurion's public stance
on the issue: the reactor at Dimona was part of a long-range
program for development of the Negev desert and existed only
for peaceful purposes. Those who called for inspection of the
reactor, Peres said, "are the same people who advocate the in-
ternationalization of Jerusalem."*

On the next day, Ben-Gurion publicly described to the full
membership of the Knesset what was being built, in the name
of Israel, in the Negev: a twenty-four-megawatt reactor "dedi-
cated entirely to peaceful purposes." There was another facility
on the grounds of Dimona, the prime minister added: "a scien-
tific institute for arid zone research." When completed, Ben-
Gurion said, the entire facility "will be open to students from
other countries." It was the first time members of Israel's par-
liament had been officially told about the reactor construction.
Asked specifically about the published reports in Europe and
the United States, Ben-Gurion casually denied them as "either
a deliberate or unconscious untruth."

Ben-Gurion was treating the Knesset as he always did when
it came to issues of state security: as a useless deliberative body
that debated and talked instead of taking action. He and his
colleagues simply did not believe that the talkative Knesset had
a prominent role to play when it came to security issues. They
were not contemptuous of the Knesset, whose deliberations on

* Ben-Gurion and his immediate associates were prepared to say whatever was nec-
essary for what they believed to be the good of the state. In his biography of Ben-
Gurion, Michael Bar-Zohar tells of the prime minister's determination to shield his
and the Israeli Army's responsibility for the brutal 1953 slaying of seventy Jordanians in
the border village of Kibiya. The retaliatory raid had been led by Ariel Sharon. A
statement was issued in Ben-Gurion's name blaming the atrocity on the inhabitants of
nearby Jewish border settlements. Asked by a confidant to explain his action, Ben-
Gurion cited a passage from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables in which a nun lies to a
policeman about the whereabouts of an escaped prisoner. The nun committed no sin in
lying, Ben-Gurion argued, "because her lie was designed to save human life. A lie like
that is measured by a different yardstick." Moshe Sharett, Ben-Gurion's longtime rival,
subsequently was depicted by Bar-Zohar as being "astounded" by the lie: "I would
have resigned if it had fallen to me to step before a microphone and broadcast a ficti-
tious account of what happened to the people of Israel and to the whole world."

GOING PUBLIC 79

other issues were accepted with respect, but saw themselves as
pragmatists who — unlike the Knesset — believed in acting first,
and then talking. Knesset members, for their part, accepted
Ben-Gurion's view that it would be inappropriate to assert
their legislative rights in a debate over Dimona. Not one mem-
ber dared to ask the obvious question: if the reactor at Dimona
were nothing more than a peaceful research tool, as Ben-Gu-
rion publicly insisted, why did it need to be swathed in such
secrecy? The Knesset was only too eager to accept any govern-
ment statement denying the intent to produce nuclear weap-
ons.

Even Ernst David Bergmann's categorical denial of any plan
to make the bomb was accepted without challenge, although
Bergmann's total involvement with the bomb was widely
known. Bergmann was in the embarrassing position of still
serving as chairman and sole member of the Israeli Atomic
Energy Commission, although there had been no commission-
ers for him to chair for years. The six other members all had
left their posts by the mid-1950s; the departures have repeatedly
been cited by scholars and in American intelligence files as
evidence of serious disagreement inside the Israeli scientific
community over Bergmann's plans for Dimona. For the most
part, they were not. The commission members moved en masse
to the physics department at the Weizmann Institute, accord-
ing to Israeli sources, because senior government officials hos-
tile to nuclear development, including Levi Eshkol and Pinhas
Lavon, then the defense minister, refused to allocate research
funds for them. Two of the former commissioners would
emerge in the 1960s as critics of the nuclear programs; others,
such as Amos Deshalit, Israel's most eminent nuclear physicist,
ended up being closely involved with Dimona.

The Israeli statements were not challenged in subsequent
days and weeks by the Eisenhower administration, which, hav-
ing triggered the first public discussion of the Israeli bomb,
immediately retreated in the face of Israeli's shameless denials.
In a statement released to the press on the day after Ben-Gu-
rion's speech, the White House joined with the Knesset in ac-
cepting the Israeli cover story for Dimona at face value: "The
government of Israel has given assurances that its new reactor

80 THE SAMSON OPTION

... is dedicated solely for research purposes to develop scien-
tific knowledge and thus to serve the needs of industry, agricul-
ture, health and science. . . . Israel states it will welcome
visits by students and scientists of friendly countries to the
reactor upon its completion." The statement, personally ap-
proved by the President, added, "It is gratifying to note that as
made public the Israel atomic energy program does not repre-
sent cause for special concern."

The administration's retreat continued on the next day: it
was now concerned with limiting the worldwide criticism di-
rected at Israel. A private State Department circular sent on
December 22 to American embassies around the world, written
in cablese, noted that the government "believes Israel atomic
energy program as made public does not represent cause for
special concern." Officials of the department, who had been
involved in the initial decision earlier in the month to pressure
Israel, were now said, according to the circular, which was
released under the Freedom of Information Act, to be "consid-
erably disturbed by large amount of info re USG [United
States Government] interest in Israel's atomic program which
has leaked into American and world press. Effort has been to
create more excitement than facts as revealed by Israelis war-
rant. Department will do what it can in Washington and hopes
addressee posts can assist in stilling atmosphere." The notion
of "stilling atmosphere" would define America's enduring pol-
icy toward the Israeli bomb.

There was one final protest, in secret. On January 6, 1961,
Christian Herter gave his farewell briefing as secretary of state
to a closed session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
(the transcript was declassified in 1984). Dimona came up, and
Herter was discussing the "disturbing" new element in the
Middle East when Senator Bourke B. Hickenlooper, the con-
servative Republican from Iowa, interrupted testily. "I think
the Israelis have just lied to us like horse thieves on this thing,"
Hickenlooper said. "They have completely distorted, misrepre-
sented, and falsified the facts in the past. I think it is very
serious ... to have them perform in this manner in connec-
tion with this very definite production reactor facility which
they have been secretly building, and which they have consis-

GOING PUBLIC 81

tently, and with a completely straight face, denied to us they
were building." Hickenlooper knew what he was talking
about: at the time he was chairman of the Joint Committee on
Atomic Energy.

The powerful senator also knew that he was just blowing off
steam in a secret hearing. No one in the lame-duck Eisenhower
administration was going to do anything more to take on Israel.
"I'm not going to ask you as secretary of state to answer,"
Hickenlooper added limply. "I hope I am wrong."

Dimona would be left for the New Frontier of John F. Ken-
nedy.

7

Dual Loyalty

Lewis Strauss, John McCone's predecessor as chair-
man of the Atomic Energy Commission, was the epitome of the
1950s Cold Warrior, an American booster who was adamantly
opposed to the spread of nuclear weapons. Strauss certainly
knew as much about Dimona as anybody in the intelligence
community by the time he left the AEC in 1958. There is no
evidence, however, that he raised questions about the Israeli
weapons program while in government; nor was he known to
have ever discussed Dimona after leaving office. He most cer-
tainly did not tell McCone, a devout Roman Catholic, about it.

Strauss chose not to talk about the Israeli nuclear program
because, as a Jew with deep feelings about the Holocaust, he
approved of it. His strong private feelings about Israel and its
need for security were in sharp contrast to his public image of
a thoroughly assimilated Jew who offended many — and amused
others — by insisting that his name be pronounced "Straws."

A conservative investment banker from Virginia who rose to
admiral in the Navy Reserves during World War II, Strauss
viewed America's nuclear arsenal as essential to survival
against the Soviet Union; those who disagreed with him were
not merely wrong, they were Communist dupes. He had left
his Wall Street firm after the war to serve until 1950 as one of
the original members of the Atomic Energy Commission, an
independent federal agency set up to be custodian of America's
nuclear materials, just as the Army's Manhattan Engineering
District had been administratively in charge of Oppenheimer's
secret work in Los Alamos. Strauss and his five fellow commis-
sioners now found themselves the proprietors of all fissionable
materials; they also were responsible for operating the nation's

84 THE SAMSON OPTION

nuclear reactors and developing atomic bombs. Civilian control
of the nuclear arsenal was so total that the commission initially
did not tell the military either the number or the yield of the
bombs being manufactured, creating havoc with the Joint
Chiefs of Staff's early nuclear war planning. (The Department
of Energy is in charge of nuclear weapons production today.)

Strauss quickly emerged as the strongman of the commis-
sion, and he became even more powerful in 1953 when Eisen-
hower asked him to return to the AEC as its chairman. Strauss
supported loyalty oaths for citizens with access to nuclear in-
formation. He was insistent on continued nuclear testing and
publicly took issue with those who claimed that fallout from
the tests was dangerous to human health. He also fought
against attempts by the Eisenhower administration to negotiate
a nuclear test ban treaty or any other nuclear arms agreement
with the Soviet Union. Strauss sided with those in the govern-
ment and Congress who sought to prevent the passing of weap-
ons information to the European allies in fear that the Soviet
bloc would gain access to it.

At the same time, he championed Atoms for Peace, the Ei-
senhower administration program that called for America's al-
lies to be provided with American nuclear technology and
nuclear fuel — under international safeguards — to promote the
peaceful use of atomic energy. The assumption, which turned
out to be dreadfully wrong, was that smaller nations, once sup-
plied with the enriched uranium or plutonium needed to drive
a nuclear power plant, would have no incentive or desire to
develop nuclear weapons. Strauss was, not surprisingly, a pro-
ponent of private enterprise and worked hard to ensure that
industry — and not the government — would be permitted to
build and operate nuclear power plants.

The AEC commissioner became best known to most Ameri-
cans, however, for his dislike of J. Robert Oppenheimer, who
had sparked a furor in the early 1950s by calling on the United
States to abate the arms race by forgoing the hydrogen bomb.
In 1954, Strauss led a bitter and successful fight to strip Op-
penheimer of his security clearance; the hearings, which even-
tually centered on Oppenheimer's loyalty and integrity,
captivated the nation. Strauss's activities against Oppenheimer

DUAL LOYALTY 85

were not always in the open; evidence subsequently was re-
vealed showing that Strauss had directed the FBI to monitor
Oppenheimer's movements and tap his telephone, including
calls to his attorney, in an effort to make sure that the clearance
would be denied.

Strauss's tactics and his prickly public demeanor ensured
that he would never be well liked, despite his playing a major
role in American nuclear policy until his death in 1974, at age
seventy-seven. Even close associates viewed him as aloof, arro-
gant, and calculating; many others viewed his demand that he
be called "Straws" as a sign that he was defensive about being
Jewish. None of this seemed to matter to Dwight Eisenhower,
who trusted his judgment and would later describe him as
among the "towering governmental figures" of Western civili-
zation. Eisenhower offered him a series of top jobs after Strauss
decided in 1958 to leave the AEC — as secretary of state and
White House chief of staff, both of which Strauss refused — and
finally got him to agree to become secretary of commerce. The
1959 confirmation hearings were a disaster — Strauss was caught
being less than candid with the Senate Commerce Committee
— and led to a humiliating rejection. He was the only cabinet
nominee not to be confirmed during Eisenhower's two terms,
and only the eighth such rejection in American history.

Strauss remained undaunted in his hostility to the Soviet
Union after leaving public life, telling a congressional panel
during hearings on the Kennedy administration's proposed nu-
clear test ban, "I'm not sure that the reduction of [U.S.-USSR]
tension is necessarily a good thing." He also continued to advo-
cate the use of atomic energy, and in 1964 made a visit to Israel
— apparently his first — to consult with the government on a
proposed nuclear-powered water desalinization plant.

At some point in his AEC career, Strauss, who attended most
of the international conferences on the peaceful uses of the
atom, met and befriended his Israeli counterpart, Ernst David
Bergmann. It was a relationship shared with few; neither
Strauss's biographer nor his son, Lewis, who has had access to
all of his father's personal papers, knew that the two had met.

The friendship with Bergmann provides the strongest evi-
dence of Strauss's sympathy for the Israeli nuclear weapons

86 THE SAMSON OPTION

program. In the fall of 1966, Strauss used his influence to get
Bergmann a two-month appointment as a visiting fellow at the
prestigious Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton.
Strauss, who never graduated from college, had joined the in-
stitute's board of trustees during World War II, and he contin-
ued to be one of its major contributors and fund-raisers. The
institute rarely dealt with chemists — its fellows are physicists
and mathematicians — but the rules were bent for Strauss. Berg-
mann was a bitter man at that point; he had been forced to
resign his posts at the defense ministry and as head of the Is-
raeli Atomic Energy Commission after his continued objec-
tions to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol's decision — in part
because of pressure from President Lyndon B. Johnson — to de-
lay full-scale nuclear weapons production.

"Strauss had nudged me about Bergmann," recalled Carl
Kaysen, then the institute's newly appointed director. u He told
me he was a very distinguished scientist." It was only after
Bergmann arrived, Kaysen added, that he learned who he was
and what he did. Bergmann wasn't very busy, and u he would
come by and talk to me. It became clear that he and Strauss
were close, and also clear that he was working on [the Israeli
nuclear] weapons program. He was very relaxed about it." It
was also obvious that Bergmann was telling Kaysen all that he
had told Strauss. Kaysen, a distinguished political economist
who had been deputy assistant to the President for national
security affairs, wasn't surprised to learn that Israel was inter-
ested in nuclear bombs, but it was a jolt to realize that Strauss
— seemingly so ambivalent about his Jewishness and so op-
posed to any spread of nuclear weapons technology — privately
was in favor of a nuclear-armed Israel.

Perhaps because Strauss's political life was so mired in turbu-
lence, the public and the press never had a chance to get more
than a glimpse of his private feelings about being Jewish and
his guilt about not doing more in the 1930s to save Jews caught
up in the Holocaust.

There was really no secret about his Jewishness — Strauss had
been a leader since 1938 of Congregation Emanu-El, the largest
and most prominent Reform synagogue in New York City. In

DUAL LOYALTY 87

1957, Eisenhower had briefly toyed with the idea of naming him
secretary of defense, but decided that his Jewishness would
cause too many problems with the Arab nations in the Middle
East. Yet Strauss's activities on behalf of a Jewish homeland
apparently were not known, not even to his close associates in
the Atomic Energy Commission. In his memoirs, published in
1962, Strauss wrote bitterly about the Nazi Holocaust and those
— including himself — who did not do enough: "The years from
1933 to the outbreak of World War II will ever be a nightmare to
me, and the puny efforts I made to alleviate the tragedies were
utter failures, save in a few individual cases — pitifully few."

In 1933, Strauss had been asked by the American Jewish Com-
mittee to attend an international conference in London on the
Jewish plight. There he met Dr. Chaim Weizmann and listened
as the conferees agreed that an "astronomical sum" of money
from the United States must be raised to help resettle what
could be millions of Jews. Strauss, then fervently opposed to a
Jewish state in Palestine, was the only delegate to raise his
voice in dissent during the conference, a position he came to
regret. Six years later, Strauss would spend much time and
effort in an unsuccessful attempt to convince the British gov-
ernment to donate a large chunk of colonial Africa for resettle-
ment by European refugees, Jews and non-Jews alike. With the
Nazi blitzkrieg only months away, money was no longer an
object: Strauss and his American colleagues, who included Ber-
nard Baruch, the financier, were agreed that as much as $300
million could be raised.* It was too late; Strauss's strong feel-
ings about that failure — and the failure of world leadership —
are explicit in his memoir: "The tidal wave of war swept over
the continents and across the ocean and a world in shock closed

* The goal was to convince the British to cede a tract of land in Kenya, Tanganyika
(now Tanzania), or northern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Strauss carried a letter to
London from Baruch in the late summer of 1939 noting that the land to be ceded in
Africa could be "cleaned up with modern equipment. The world has not always been
as clean as it is now. Our own country was full of morasses. Panama and Cuba were
cleaned up, and Africa can be cleaned up, too. . . . [I]n this new land there would be a
place for tens of millions and they would be the best, the strongest and the most
courageous peoples. . . ." Missing from the Baruch-Strauss proposal is any thought or
concern about the Africans who lived in the areas to be ceded. Any such resettlement
would have inevitably resulted in internal conflict similar to that raging then — and
now — between the Israelis and those Palestinians who were ousted from their home-
lands by the Zionist movement.

88 THE SAMSON OPTION

its eyes, figuratively and literally, to the plight of the unfortu-
nate beings who were engulfed."*

Like many Jews, Strauss remained hostile to Zionism all of
his life, but he won the confidence of his colleagues in the Is-
raeli Atomic Energy Commission by publicly joining them in
prayer in Geneva during the 1955 United Nations Conference
on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, at the time the largest
international scientific conference ever held. More than fifteen
hundred delegates from seventy nations, including Israel,
whose delegation was led by Ernst Bergmann, took part.
Moshe Sharett, then foreign minister, received a full report — as
he noted in a diary entry for September 18, 1955 — from a dep-
uty, who characteristically thought it important to tell Sharett
that at least three hundred of the delegates were Jewish. De-
spite that large number, Sharett wrote, when the Jewish com-
munity of Geneva arranged for a special Friday-night service,
"present only were the Jewish delegation [to the conference]
and the head of the U.S. delegation, Admiral Strauss."

* Neither Strauss nor the CIA's Dino Brugioni knew it at the time, of course, but
reconnaissance aircraft of the Mediterranean Allied Air Force and the Fifteenth U.S.
Air Force repeatedly overflew and photographed the Nazi crematoriums at Auschwitz-
Birkenau in Poland in the last year of the war, where twelve thousand Jews and gypsies
were being murdered daily by 1944. The death camps were about five miles from an
I.G. Farben synthetic oil and rubber complex that was bombed four times in World
War II. In 1978, Brugioni and Robert Poirier, a CIA colleague, noticed that the camps
were in direct alignment with the reconnaissance path for the Farben complex. Bru-
gioni knew from his own experiences that reconnaissance cameras were always turned
on well before the target was reached. Were there aerial photos of the camps buried in
Pentagon World War II archives? In a subsequent essay, Brugioni wrote: "We found
that the extermination complex had been photographed at least thirty times. Analyzing
the photographs, we could see the four large complexes of gas chamber and crematori-
ums. . . . Bodies were being buried in trenches or burned in large open pits. Some of
the photos showed victims being marched to their deaths, while others showed prison-
ers being processed for slave labour." The photographs were invaluable as a historical
record — the Nazis had forbidden any photography while the camps were in operation
— and President Jimmy Carter personally presented a monograph based on them to the
President's Commission on the Holocaust. During the war, Brugioni added, there was
no historical or social background that would have enabled Air Force photo interpret-
ers, intent on targeting the I.G. Farben plant, to understand what they were seeing:
"Anytime a line of people near a building were seen in a picture, it was usually labeled
'mess hall.' " There were other factors that prevented a close study of the camp photo-
graphs at the time, insisted Brugioni, most significantly the intense intelligence needs
of the June 1944 D-Day invasion of Europe, which resulted in heavy workloads for all
Allied photo interpreters. Allied warplanes also were attempting to break the back of
the Luftwaffe in late 1944 by heavy raids on all of the synthetic fuel plants in Germany,
Brugioni said, creating yet another demand for photo interpretation and bomb damage
assessment.

DUAL LOYALTY 89

Strauss, nonetheless, worked hard while in Washington at
reining in his intense feelings about being Jewish and about the
Holocaust, although many of his former subordinates from the
AEC remarked in interviews about his unrelenting hostility to
Germans and his reluctance to deal with Germans on any is-
sue. Yet the longtime AEC official Myron Kratzer, who is also
Jewish, did not find out until Strauss had left the AEC that the
former chairman followed the tradition of fasting during Yom
Kippur, the holiest Jewish holiday. Strauss had been asked by
Eisenhower after his retirement to head the American delega-
tion to an international meeting in Vienna, and on Yom Kip-
pur, Kratzer recalled, "Strauss did not show up. He simply
closed himself in his room on that day."

Strauss's background and his strong feelings about the Holo-
caust cannot be disregarded in analyzing why he did not tell
anyone — especially John McCone — about Dimona. Fair or not,
the issue of "dual loyalty" — exemplified by Strauss's actions —
has been a very real concern to the American intelligence com-
munity since the creation of Israel in 1948. American Jews, for
example, were routinely barred for many years from dealing
with Israeli issues inside CIA headquarters; none of the early
station chiefs or agents assigned to Israel was Jewish. One Jew
who served decades later in a high position in the CIA angrily
acknowledged that when he arrived, "every fucking Jew in the
CIA was in accounting or legal." The official wasn't quite
right, but even those few Jews who did get to the top, such as
Edward W. Proctor, who served as deputy director for intelli-
gence in the mid-1970s, were not given access to all of the sensi-
tive files in connection with Israel. Jews also were excluded
from Hebrew language training (at one time called "special
Arabic") in the National Security Agency; such training, of
course, is a prerequisite for being assigned to NSA field sta-
tions that intercept Israeli communications. There was a flat
ban in the Navy communications intelligence agency (known
as the Naval Security Group) on the assignment of a Jew to a
Middle East issue.

There was — and still is — a widespread belief among Ameri-
can foreign service officers that any diplomatic reporting criti-

90 THE SAMSON OPTION

cal of Israel would somehow be delivered within days to the
Israeli embassy in Washington. In 1963 the Kennedy adminis-
tration informally agreed with Israel that neither country
would spy on or conduct espionage activities against the other.
The agreement was sought by American officials, a former
Kennedy aide recalled, in an attempt to limit the extent of Is-
raeli penetration of America.

The truth is that Jews and non-Jews alike looked the other
way when it came to Israel's nuclear capability. The notion of
dual loyalty solely as a Jewish problem is far too narrow; the
Jewish survivors who became Israelis, with their incredible
travails and sufferings during World War II, had and still have
enormous appeal to Americans of all backgrounds. The pri-
mary effect of "dual loyalty" has been a form of self-censorship
that has kept the United States government from dealing ratio-
nally and coherently with the strategic and political issues
raised by a nuclear-armed Israel. The issue is not whether rules
or laws have been broken, but that very few officials who sup-
ported Israel, Jewish or not, have used their position to try to
obtain a complete and accurate picture of the Israeli nuclear
program. And no one tried to stop it. Those few government
bureaucrats in the nonproliferation field who even tried to
learn all there was to learn about Dimona were often accused
of being "zealots" — and thus not fully trustworthy.

Yet, being Jewish inevitably raised questions, even among
the most fair-minded of men. Dino Brugioni briefed Strauss
regularly on U-2 nuclear intelligence, but found him inscruta-
ble when it came to information on the Israeli nuclear reactor:
"I never knew what he was thinking; never understood him.
Fd get the reaction 'That's all right.' " Brugioni had his own
reasons for wondering about Strauss. He knew there was evi-
dence inside the CIA suggesting that American and European
Jews had been directly involved in the financing and construc-
tion of Dimona from the start. "There was a fervor, especially
among New York Jews," Brugioni added. "The attitude was
'You had to protect Israel,' and anybody [in the intelligence
community] who did not suffered."

In interviews for this book with senior officials of the Ameri-
can nuclear weapons program — men similar to Lewis Strauss,

DUAL LOYALTY 91

who spent part or all of their life making bombs — none ex-
pressed any doubt about Israel's nuclear ambitions. Most told
of close personal friendships with Israeli physicists who were
working on the Israeli weapons program. No one with the so-
phistication and expertise of Lewis Strauss could have had any
question about the significance of a secret reactor in the Negev.
His widow, Alice, still spry in 1991 at the age of eighty-eight,
acknowledged that her husband, who was very closemouthed
about his work, "would have approved of Israel trying to de-
fend itself. No question of that." Strauss also had to know that
a Jewish nuclear physicist named Raymond Fox had created
high-level consternation by emigrating to Israel in 1957 from
California, where he had access to weapons design information
at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the nuclear
research facility operated by the University of California for
the Atomic Energy Commission. Fox's secrets could be invalu-
able to the Israelis at Dimona.

Strauss's failure to discuss Dimona with John McCone may
have been done in the belief that he had an obligation to ensure
that what happened to the Jews of Europe under Hitler could
not happen again. Perhaps he thought he was atoning for what
he did not do, or could not do, to help the Jews of Europe
before World War II. Similar choices were made over the next
thirty years by Jews and non-Jews in the American govern-
ment, who looked the other way when it came to Dimona.
Were they guilty of a double standard, as Dino Brugioni and
others in the intelligence community suggest? Did Lewis
Strauss, who so eagerly assumed the worst when it came to the
loyalty of men such as J. Robert Oppenheimer, fail to fulfill the
obligations of his office in terms of the known intelligence on
Dimona and his obligation to tell his successor about it?

Many American Jews, perhaps understandably, believe the
question of "dual loyalty" is an issue that should never be
raised in public. They fear that any discussion of Jewish sup-
port for Israel at the expense of the United States would feed
anti-Semitism; the fear seems to be that non-Jews are convinced
that any Jewish support for Israel precludes primary loyalty to
the United States. A second issue, in terms of American Jewish

92 THE SAMSON OPTION

support for Israel, is that any public accounting of Israel's nu-
clear capacity would trigger renewed fears among Arab na-
tions of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy and a redoubling of
Arab efforts to get the bomb.

Weighing against those concerns are several questions. Can
the world afford to pretend that Israel is not a nuclear power
because to do otherwise would raise difficult issues? Can any
international agreement to limit the spread of nuclear weapons
be enforced if Israel's bombs are not fully accounted for? Can
the Arab nations truly be expected to ignore Israel's possession
of atomic weapons simply because the weapons are not publi-
cized? Should Israel, because of its widespread and emotional
support in America, be held to a different moral standard than
Pakistan or North Korea or South Africa?

Many senior nonproliferation officials in the American gov-
ernment were convinced by the early 1990s that the Middle
East remained the one place where nuclear weapons might be
used. "Israel has a well-thought-out nuclear strategy and, if suf-
ficiently threatened, they will use it," said one expert who has
been involved in government studies on the nuclear issue in
the Middle East for two decades.

Some of Strauss's former subordinates in the AEC find it diffi-
cult to believe that his Jewishness would have been the reason
that Strauss would or would not tell John McCone about
Dimona. Algie A. Wells, who was director of international af-
fairs for the AEC in mid-1958, at the time McCone replaced
Strauss, suggested that there were far more trivial reasons for
Strauss to have ignored his statutory responsibility as AEC
chairman: "Why would Strauss have told McCone? The men
weren't close. They both had colossal egos. I can't imagine
them being buddy-buddy and having a drink together."

In Wells's view, whether Strauss did or did not tell McCone
wasn't that important. Wells had been in Israel in 1958, he re-
called, and learned then — as had any government official who
chose to do so — that Israel was building a nuclear reactor. If
McCone was surprised to learn about the reactor in late i960,
added Wells, "he shouldn't have been."

8

A Presidential Struggle

Abraham Feinberg shared Lewis Strauss's belief in op-
erating behind the scenes on behalf of Israel, but Feinberg op-
erated in a way Strauss could not — with single-mindedness and
abandon. Feinberg, a New Yorker who made his fortune in the
hosiery and apparel business, had helped bankroll Harry S.
Truman's seemingly doomed 1948 presidential campaign; by
the presidential campaign of i960 he was perhaps the most im-
portant Jewish fund-raiser for the Democratic Party. There
was nothing subtle in his message: the dollars he collected were
meant to ensure continued Democratic Party support for
Israel.

Feinberg also had been a "player" — to use his word — who
shared the early dreams of his good friend Ernst David Berg-
mann of a nuclear-armed Israel. He served publicly as presi-
dent of the Israel Bond Organization, while privately helping
to raise some of the many millions of dollars needed to build
the controversial reactor and reprocessing plant at Dimona.
Feinberg accepted the fact that the expanding and expensive
operations at Dimona had to be financed outside of the normal
Israeli budget process; there were too many critics of the nu-
clear program inside and outside Israel to raise money any
other way. The unwanted publicity at the end of the Eisen-
hower administration had only added to Ben-Gurion's and
Shimon Peres's determination to protect the secret. Feinberg
was more than just a fund-raiser in all this; he became an inside
advocate for Ben-Gurion and Peres as President Kennedy, who
brought in John McCone as director of central intelligence in
September 1961, established himself as firmly opposed to the
Israeli bomb. There was a particularly close association with

94 THE SAMSON OPTION

Peres: "He came to me often for money. If he gave the assign-
ment to me, I helped him."

Feinberg remains proud of his support for Israel and its se-
cret weapons program. His most pitched battle on behalf of
Israel came in the early days of the Kennedy administration
when he successfully helped fight off the initial Kennedy insis-
tence that an American inspection team be permitted full and
unfettered access to Dimona. Feinberg's success was rooted in
the American political process. "My path to power," he ex-
plains, "was cooperation in terms of what they needed — cam-
paign money."

Feinberg's first taste of political power had come in the wan-
ing days of the Truman campaign against Thomas E. Dewey,
the New York Republican governor who was seemingly run-
ning away with the 1948 election. "From the beginning of my
political affiliation with Truman," he explained, "I felt it was
the duty of every Jew to help Israel." Feinberg, as a member of
a Democratic campaign finance committee, was invited to a
White House meeting with the President, who had won the
worldwide admiration of Jews for his decision to recognize the
State of Israel earlier in the year. "If I had to bet money,"
Feinberg recalled Truman saying, "I'd bet on myself — if I
could go across the country by train." At least $100,000 would
be needed, the President said. Feinberg told Truman's aides
that he would be able to guarantee the money by the end of the
day, and subsequently he arranged for Truman's whistle-stop
train campaign to be met by local Jewish leaders at each stop
"to be refueled" — that is, provided with additional contribu-
tions as needed.

Among Feinberg's prize possessions is a seven-page hand-
written letter of thanks and praise from Truman. Feinberg esti-
mates that he and his Jewish colleagues raised "in the
neighborhood of $400,000" during the 1948 whistle-stop cam-
paign. Truman understood the rules and at some later point
discussed naming Feinberg ambassador to Israel. Feinberg de-
clined: "I told him no Jew should be ambassador to Israel until
the peace was solved."

Feinberg's account of his bankrolling of Harry Truman is

A PRESIDENTIAL STRUGGLE 95

found in none of the contemporary histories of that period,*
and — like some of his later special fund-raising activities for
Dimona — cannot be fully verified. Strong evidence is available,
however, that Feinberg's role was as pivotal as he suggests. For
example, Clark Clifford, the eminent Washington attorney who
was a Truman aide and poker-playing crony, has a vivid recol-
lection of a crucial Feinberg intervention during the whistle-
stop campaign. Clifford was not involved in Democratic Party
fund-raising, but he did know that midway through the train
trip, the presidential campaign was out of money. Keeping the
campaign alive, he recalled, was "as difficult a task as anybody
ever had. We couldn't find anyone who thought we'd win."
Disaster loomed in Oklahoma City when one of the radio net-
works — this was the pre-television era — informed the cam-
paign that it would not nationally broadcast a much-touted
Truman foreign policy speech unless "it was paid for in ad-
vance. This put us in shock," Clifford added. "It would have
been embarrassing beyond measure." Something like $60,000
in cash was needed — immediately. "Truman thought about
who he could turn to," continued Clifford. "The fellow he later
spoke about who came through for him was Abe Feinberg. I
always gave credit to Abe for saving that particular program
and saving us that embarrassment. He really came through."

Feinberg was also active in fund-raising for Adlai E. Steven-
son, the losing Democratic candidate in 1952 and 1956, and was a
strong backer of Senator Stuart Symington, Democrat of Mis-
souri, for the Democratic presidential nomination. (Symington
would emerge later as an ardent supporter of a nuclear-armed
Israel and, paradoxically, as author of key Senate legislation to
limit the spread of such weapons.) He played no role in John
Kennedy's primary campaign for the Democratic nomination:
like many Jews, Feinberg was convinced that Kennedy's father
was anti-Semitic. Joseph P. Kennedy, a self-made millionaire
and prominent Catholic, had fought against going to war with
Germany while serving as Franklin D. Roosevelt's ambassador
to England before World War II. A few weeks after Kennedy's

* Campaign historians were not the only ones who missed the Feinberg story; none
of the contemporary daily press or television journalists covering events in 1948 wrote
about the financial ties between Feinberg and the Truman campaign.

96 THE SAMSON OPTION

nomination by the Democrats, however, Feinberg was con-
tacted by Governor Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut, who had
been Kennedy's floor manager during the Democratic conven-
tion. "I was the only Jew for him," Ribicoff recalled. "And I
realized that Jews were for anybody but Jack Kennedy. I told
Kennedy I was going to get in touch with Abe Feinberg, who I
thought was a key Jew. I arranged a meeting [with Kennedy] in
Feinberg's apartment in the Hotel Pierre and we invited all the
leading Jews." About twenty prominent businessmen and fi-
nanciers showed up.*

It was a rough session. Kennedy had just returned from a
brief vacation at the family compound at Hyannis Port, Massa-
chusetts, and it was a prominent Bostonian, Dewey D. Stone,
who set the tone with the first question, as recalled by Fein-
berg: "Jack, everybody knows the reputation of your father
concerning Jews and Hitler. And everybody knows that the
apple doesn't fall far from the tree." Kennedy's response was to
the point: "You know, my mother was part of that tree, too."
Ribicoff, who would join Kennedy's cabinet, understood the
message: "The sins of the father shouldn't fall on the son."
Fortunately for Kennedy, that message was enough for the
men at Feinberg's apartment. Kennedy had gone upstairs to a
separate room with Ribicoff to await their judgment, Feinberg
recalled. The group agreed on an initial contribution of
$500,000 to the presidential campaign, with more to come. "I
called him [Kennedy] right away," said Feinberg. "His voice
broke. He got emotional" with gratitude.

Kennedy was anything but grateful the next morning in
describing the session to Charles L. Bartlett, a newspaper col-
umnist and close friend. He had driven to Bartlett's home in
northwest Washington and dragged his friend on a walk, where
he recounted a much different version of the meeting the night

* Kennedy's social friends and colleagues agreed that Kennedy, like many wealthy
Irish Catholics of his time, had gone through prep school at Choate and Harvard
College with few close Jewish friends. One especially close schoolboy friend, according
to Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., the presidential biographer, was Alan J. Lerner, with
whom Kennedy traveled widely as a youth. There were few other Jewish childhood
friends, as Benjamin C. Bradlee, Jr., the longtime editor of the Washington Post and close
Kennedy friend, acknowledged: "I don't remember a whole lot of Jewish buddies."
That changed quickly once Kennedy got into national politics after World War II.

A PRESIDENTIAL STRUGGLE 97

before. u As an American citizen he was outraged," Bartlett re-
called, u to have a Zionist group come to him and say: 'We know
your campaign is in trouble. We're willing to pay your bills if
you'll let us have control of your Middle East policy.' " Ken-
nedy, as a presidential candidate, also resented the crudity with
which he'd been approached. "They wanted control," he an-
grily told Bartlett.

Bartlett further recalled Kennedy promising to himself that
"if he ever did get to be President, he was going to do some-
thing about it" — a candidate's perennial need for money and
resulting vulnerability to the demands of those who contrib-
uted. Kennedy, in fact, kept that promise before the end of his
first year in office, appointing a bipartisan commission in Octo-
ber to recommend ways to broaden "the financial base of our
presidential campaigns." In a statement that was far more
heartfelt than the public or the press could perceive, he criti-
cized the current method of financing campaigns as "highly
undesirable" and "not healthy" because it made candidates "de-
pendent on large financial contributions of those with special
interests." Presidential elections, Kennedy declared, were "the
supreme test of the democratic process" in the United States.
Kennedy was ahead of his time, however: the campaign financ-
ing proposals went nowhere.*

It is impossible to reconcile the differing accounts of Ken-
nedy's attitude toward the meeting in Feinberg's apartment in
the Hotel Pierre. But the fact remains that despite Kennedy's
tough words to Bartlett, Abe Feinberg's influence inside the
White House was established by the end of Kennedy's first year
in office, and the young President did little to diminish it over
the next two years. One factor obviously was political: a higher
percentage of Jews (81 percent) voted for Kennedy in i960 than
did Roman Catholics (73 percent); it was the Jewish vote that
provided Kennedy's narrow plurality of 114,563 votes over

* The commission, headed by Alexander Heard, then dean of the Graduate School
at the University of North Carolina, recommended, among other things, the use of
federal tax credits to encourage political contributions by individuals. The goal was to
broaden the base of a candidate's financial support and reduce dependence on special-
interest groups and the wealthy. In 1962, Kennedy submitted five draft bills to reform
presidential campaign financing to Congress; none survived. Kennedy tried again in
1963, submitting two more draft bills to Congress; again neither survived.

98 THE SAMSON OPTION

Nixon. Feinberg got a specific reward after the election: his
lawyer brother, Wilfred, was given a federal judgeship by the
President.* "Feinberg only wanted one thing — to put his
brother on the federal bench," RibicofF recalled. "I sat in on the
meeting with Kennedy and recommended that he do it. The
President said, 'Look, Abe, when all is said and done, the only
Jew who was for me [early in the campaign] was Abe Fein-
berg.' "

The issue of Jewish political power and the Israeli bomb was
complicated during these years by the fact that John Kennedy
was intellectually and emotionally committed to a halt in the
spread of nuclear weapons. Carl Kaysen, who moved from the
Harvard faculty to the National Security Council in 1961, re-
called: "There were two subjects that you could get the Presi-
dent started on and he'd talk for hours. One was the gold
standard, the other was nonproliferation." The political expe-
diencies that forced him to be ambivalent about Dimona had to
be frustrating. Kennedy eventually agreed to a series of face-
saving American inspections of the Israeli nuclear facilities,
although the label "inspection" hardly does justice to what the
Israelis would permit.

Kennedy's complicated feelings about Jewish political power
and the Israeli issue were summarized in his appointment of
former campaign aide Myer (Mike) Feldman as the presidential
point man for Jewish and Israeli affairs. The President viewed
Feldman, whose strong support for Israel was widely known,
as a necessary evil whose highly visible White House position
was a political debt that had to be paid. Feldman recalled being
summoned by the President the day after the inauguration and

* Wilfred Feinberg, a legal scholar who had been editor in chief of the Columbia Law
Review, served from 1961 to 1966 as a federal judge in the Southern District of New York.
In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson, anxious to do something for his good friend Abe
Feinberg, promoted Wilfred to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second
Circuit. To do so, he had to override the recommendation of Senator Robert F. Ken-
nedy of New York, the late President's younger brother, who had resigned as attorney
general to run, successfully, for the Senate. Robert Kennedy pushed for the nomina-
tion of Edward Weinfeld, widely considered to be the most distinguished jurist on the
lower federal court, but Kennedy understood that he could never match Abe
Feinberg's influence with Johnson. "It was pure politics," recalled Peter B. Edelman,
then a senior Kennedy aide, "but not one of those cases where politics produced a poor
judge." Wilfred Feinberg served with distinction and went on to become chief judge of
the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1980.

A PRESIDENTIAL STRUGGLE 99

authorized to monitor all of the State Department and White
House cable traffic on the Middle East: "I said, 'Mr. President,
I come with a strong bias toward Israel.' He told me, 'That's
why I want you to look at them.' " Feldman's special relation-
ship and his special access created havoc inside the White
House, as Kennedy had to know it would. The President's
most senior advisers, most acutely McGeorge Bundy, the na-
tional security adviser, desperately sought to cut Feldman out
of the flow of Middle East paperwork; the result often was
bureaucratic chaos. "The White House staff under Kennedy
was not harmonious," acknowledged Kaysen, who is Jewish.
"Bundy was very suspicious of Feldman, and anxious about me
and Bob Komer" — another Jewish National Security Council
staff member, assigned to monitor South Asia. "He worried
about us handling Israeli issues."* Robert W. Komer, who
would later run the pacification program in South Vietnam for
Lyndon Johnson, recalled the tension: "Mac Bundy had a
standing rule. He sent nothing to Feldman, because Feldman
was getting involved in issues in which he had no business. It
was hard to tell the difference between what Feldman said and
what the Israeli ambassador said."

The White House staff aides might well have been taking
their cues on treating Feldman from their young President.
Kennedy, having provided special access for Feldman, couldn't
resist making wisecracks behind his back. Charles Bartlett re-
called Kennedy interrupting a pleasant moment in Hyannis
Port by pointedly remarking — it was a Saturday morning, the
traditional time for synagogue services — "I imagine Mike's
having a meeting of the Zionists in the cabinet room." An
equally cynical view of Feldman was publicly expressed by
Robert Kennedy in an interview published in 1988 by the John
F. Kennedy Library. Speaking of Feldman, Kennedy noted that

* Jerome B. Wiesner, the President's science adviser, who also was Jewish, had a
different concern: he was totally cut out of the intelligence about Dimona and "as-
sumed" that Ben-Gurion had requested that he not deal with that issue in the White
House. Wiesner, who played a major role on disarmament issues for the Kennedy
administration, had served as a board member of the Weizmann Institute and repeat-
edly ran into Ben-Gurion on visits to Israel. "Ben-Gurion would always ask me two
questions," Wiesner recalled: "Can computers think? And should we build a nuclear
weapon? I'd always say no." That answer, Wiesner thought, marked him as a liberal in
Ben-Gurion's eyes and limited his access.

100 THE SAMSON OPTION

his older brother, the President, had valued Feldman's work
but added: "His major interest was Israel rather than the
United States."

Feldman had no illusions about the backbiting inside the
White House, but his obvious influence made it all tolerable: he
continued to operate as Kennedy's special envoy to the Israeli
government on a variety of sensitive issues, including nuclear
weapons. He had been allowed to visit Dimona in 1962 and
knew firsthand, as those around the President only suspected,
that Israel was intent on building the bomb.

Israel's bomb, and what to do about it, became a White House
fixation, part of the secret presidential agenda that would re-
main hidden for the next thirty years. None of the prominent
John F. Kennedy presidential biographies, including those
written by insiders Arthur Schlesinger and Theodore C. So-
rensen, who was the President's special counsel and chief
speechwriter, say anything about a nuclear-armed Israel or
even mention Abe Feinberg. The U-2 intelligence collected by
the CIA's Arthur Lundahl and Dino Brugioni continued to be
treated as higher than top-secret, leaving a huge gap in knowl-
edge between the bureaucracy and the men at the top. There
were inevitably farcical results.

Shortly after Kennedy's inauguration, the State Department
appointed William R. Crawford, a young foreign service of-
ficer, as director of Israeli affairs. Early on, Crawford recalled,
the Air Force attache in Israel managed to snap yet another
long-range photograph of the reactor dome at Dimona. "It was
as if there was no previous information," Crawford said. "As if
the whole thing was a total surprise to the White House, intel-
ligence community, and so forth." Meetings were held on the
critical new intelligence. "This was very hot stuff. We decided
that this was not what Israel was telling us."

Crawford was asked to draft a letter for the President to Ben-
Gurion. The letter emphasized that America's worldwide posi-
tion on nonproliferation would "be compromised if a state re-
garded as being dependent on us, as is Israel, pursues an
independent course." Other key points, Crawford said, "were a
demand for inspection and the right to convey the results to

A PRESIDENTIAL STRUGGLE 101

Nasser." The idea was to reassure the Egyptian president that
Dimona was not a weapons plant and to prevent Egypt from
beginning its own nuclear research. The inspection of Dimona
was to be carried out by an independent team of experts from
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the nuclear
safeguarding agency based in Vienna; Israel had agreed in prin-
ciple to permit the IAEA to replace the United States in the
twice-a-year monitoring of its small research reactor at Nahal
Soreq. "I drafted it very carefully," Crawford recalled. "It was
the most important letter of my life at this point in my career."
The letter was forwarded to the office of George Ball, then the
under secretary of state, rewritten,* and dispatched. "In due
course," recalled Crawford, "in comes a long, long reply from
Ben-Gurion, pages and pages." Ben-Gurion's letter to Kennedy
has not been made public, either by the United States or by
Israel, but Crawford, nearly thirty years later, had no trouble
recalling its tone. "It was very hard to see what he was saying.
It seemed evasive; didn't say he was going the nuclear route:
'We're a tiny nation surrounded by enemies,' et cetera, et
cetera. There may have been an allusion to a nuclear umbrella
— language like 'Were we able to rely on the United States,' et
cetera." In that first exchange, Crawford said, Ben-Gurion did
not agree to the IAEA inspection of Dimona.

Israel's bomb program, and the continuing exchange of letters
about it, would complicate, and eventually poison, Kennedy's
relationship with David Ben-Gurion. The Israeli prime minis-
ter had been rebuffed in seeking a state visit to Washington but,
with the aid of Abe Feinberg, contrived a May 1961 visit to the
United States. The specific occasion was an evening convoca-
tion in his honor at Brandeis University near Boston. Feinberg
managed to get the President to agree to a private meeting with
Ben-Gurion at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. A ner-
vous Kennedy asked Abe Feinberg to sit in. Feinberg refused,

* Ball's office held on to the letter for days, Crawford said, eventually provoking a
complaint from the White House. Crawford asked a friend on Ball's staff to check into
it and was told that "Mr. Ball wants me to understand that this letter sounds as if it had
been translated from the original in Sanskrit." When Ball's rewritten version finally
emerged, Crawford said, it had the same message but "in JFK prose." Crawford was
impressed.

102 THE SAMSON OPTION

but agreed to make the introductions. Ben-Gurion similarly
was anxious about the session, in fear that the continued Amer-
ican pressure over Israel's nuclear weapons project would lead
to an unwanted flare-up. Dimona already was on politically
shaky ground among the various factions inside Israel, and a
flap between Ben-Gurion and Kennedy on the issue could be
devastating to the concept of a nuclear-armed Israel. This con-
cern had prompted the Israeli government to assign physicist
Amos Deshalit to accompany two equally distinguished Ameri-
can physicists, I. I. Rabi of Columbia University and Eugene
Wigner of Princeton, to visit the still-incomplete reactor at
Dimona sometime early in 1961. Neither reported seeing evi-
dence of a weapons facility.*

The meeting with Kennedy was a major disappointment for
the Israeli prime minister, and not only because of the nuclear
issue. "He looked to me like a twenty-five-year-old boy," Ben-
Gurion later told his biographer. "I asked myself: 'How can a
man so young be elected President?' At first, I did not take him
seriously." (Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who met Ken-
nedy a month later at the Vienna summit, also was struck by
Kennedy's youth and inexperience.) No public record of the
Kennedy-Ben-Gurion meeting has been released, and it is not
reliably known what transpired on the nuclear issue. Ben-Gu-
rion later recalled that he once again asserted that Dimona was
being constructed solely for research purposes. Kennedy
brought up the Rabi- Wigner visit to Dimona and expressed
satisfaction with their conviction that the reactor was designed
for peaceful purposes. Ben-Gurion was relieved: "For the time
being, at least, the reactor had been saved."

Another important summit issue was Egypt. Kennedy was

* Wigner, who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1963, was visiting Israel when he
was asked — seemingly spontaneously — by the Israelis to visit Dimona. He "vaguely"
recalled, he said in telephone interviews in 1989 and 1991, being accompanied by Rabi, a
1944 Nobel laureate. "We didn't see much of it," Wigner, who was born in 1902, added.
"I thought it was practically completed." Israeli scientists already may have begun
some experimental work, he said: "They played with it." Wigner, who had joined with
Albert Einstein in urging the United States to begin building the atom bomb before
World War II, cautioned the author that his memory had faded with age. Rabi, a
longtime consultant on technical and scientific issues to the United States government,
died in 1988; neither his wife, friends, nor officials in charge of Columbia University's
oral history project dealing with his career had information about his visit to Dimona.

A PRESIDENTIAL STRUGGLE 103

intent on improving relations with the Nasser government,
and the President outlined his new policy. Ben-Gurion re-
newed a standing Israeli request for the sale of U.S. Hawk
surface-to-air missiles: the Hawk was needed to match the ar-
rival of Soviet-built MiG fighters in Egypt. Kennedy promised
to look into it.

The most memorable moment for Ben-Gurion came when
he was leaving the hotel room. Kennedy suddenly walked him
back inside to tell him "something important." It was a politi-
cal message: "I know that I was elected by the votes of Ameri-
can Jews. I owe them my victory. Tell me, is there something I
ought to do?" Ben-Gurion had not come to New York to haggle
with the President about Jewish votes. "You must do whatever
is good for the free world," he responded. He later told his
aides: "To me, he looks like a politician." Ben-Gurion, known
to his associates as B.G., made similar complaints to Abe Fein-
berg. "There's no way of describing the relationship between
Jack Kennedy and Ben-Gurion," Feinberg said, "because
there's no way B.G. was dealing with JFK as an equal, at least
as far as B.G. was concerned. He had the typical attitude of an
old-fashioned Jew toward the young. He disrespected him as a
youth." There was an additional factor: Joseph Kennedy. "B.G.
could be vicious, and he had such a hatred of the old man."

Ben-Gurion's complaints about Kennedy and the continuing
pressure about Dimona unquestionably were also linked to an
all-important agenda that was remaining on track. In April, a
Norwegian official named Jens C. Hauge had spent two weeks
conducting Norway's first — and only — inspection of the heavy
water that had been sold to Israel. The inspection, closely
monitored by Ernst Bergmann, couldn't have gone better.
Dimona was not yet in operation, and the water, still in its
original shipping barrels, was safely stored near the small and
totally innocent Nahal Soreq research reactor at Rehovot.
Hauge's report to the Norwegian foreign ministry was aston-
ishing in its uncritical acceptance of all of Bergmann's asser-
tions. "As far as I know," Hauge wrote, "Israel has not
attempted to keep secret the fact that they are building a reac-
tor. . . . Professor Bergmann at an earlier point had given in-

104 THE SAMSON OPTION

formation to his colleagues in the U.S. about the reactor, but
Israel had not kept America officially informed about the reac-
tor. This was possibly the background for the uproar that took
place in America about the reactor." At another point, Hauge
quoted Bergmann as explaining that Norway's heavy water
would be used to power a twenty-four-megawatt "research re-
actor" that would be a model for a planned much larger power
reactor. In a second memorandum to the foreign ministry,
Hauge added: "Israel is interested in keeping the location of
reactor building quiet and wants any commotion about it
ended."

Two months after the visit with Kennedy, in July 1961, Ben-
Gurion and his top advisers attended the widely publicized
launching in the Negev of Israel's first rocket, known as Shavit
II.* Such military events normally were kept secret, but Mapai
Party leaders — with general elections scheduled for mid-Au-
gust — decided to go public after receiving reports that Egypt
was planning to fire some of its rockets on July 23, the ninth
anniversary of the coup that had eventually brought Nasser to
power. The multistage, solid-propellant Shavit II, which
soared fifty miles into the upper atmosphere, was said to be
designed to measure upper atmospheric winds as part of a se-
ries of experiments for the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission.
Ernst Bergmann subsequently told a scientific journal: "We are
not particularly interested in the prestige of space, but in the
scientific aspects of it." The American intelligence community
— and Israel's Arab enemies — got the message: it was only a
matter of time and money before Israeli developed a missile
system capable of delivering nuclear warheads. Bergmann had
created another light bulb for his nuclear lamp.

Kennedy, despite his remarks to Ben-Gurion, was far from per-
suaded by the inspections by Rabi and Wigner that Dimona
was anything but a nuclear weapons production facility. A nu-

* There was no Shavit I, Shimon Peres told a political rally on the night of the
launch, because of the possibility that the name would be corrupted to Shavit Aleph,
since aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Aleph also was an electoral
symbol for the Mapai Party. If the rocket had been named Shavit I, Peres said, "we
would be accused of making propaganda."

A PRESIDENTIAL STRUGGLE 105

clear-armed Israel seemed to be looming, and it could threaten
Middle East stability as well as the President's strong desire for
a treaty with the Soviet Union to ban the testing of nuclear
weapons in the atmosphere. And there was no indication that
Ben-Gurion, who was admitting nothing, would back off. The
Israeli prime minister, in subsequent private communications
to the White House, began to refer to the President as "young
man"; Kennedy made clear to associates that he found the let-
ters to be offensive.

The President's apprehension about the Israeli bomb un-
doubtedly was a factor in his surprising appointment of John
McCone to replace Allen Dulles as CIA director in the wake of
the Bay of Pigs debacle. There was every political reason not to
appoint him: McCone not only was a prominent Republican
but had spoken out against the White House's much-desired
test ban treaty with the Soviet Union. Arthur Schlesinger
writes that Kennedy, obviously sensitive about his preference,
invited McCone to a private two-hour meeting u on the pretext
of asking his views on nuclear testing." There is no public
record of what the two men discussed, although Ben-Gurion's
latest annoying letter had arrived only days before and the So-
viet Union had announced the resumption of nuclear testing,
ending the informal U.S.-USSR moratorium. In any case,
McCone subsequently told Walt Elder, his executive assistant
in the CIA, that Kennedy had complained to him about the fact
that he was "getting all sorts of conflicting advice on the whole
range of nuclear issues," including the Israeli bomb. Kennedy
asked McCone to prepare a written analysis of the issue and
report back within a few weeks. McCone did so and, upon his
return, as he told Elder, the President tossed the report aside —
"Give it to the staff" — and offered him the CIA job. He also
asked McCone to keep word of his pending appointment
"quiet. Those liberal bastards in the basement [on Bundy's Na-
tional Security Council staff] will complain about it."

Foreseen or not, Kennedy had found a soulmate. McCone
had his own policy goals, and they meshed closely with the
young President's, said Elder: "McCone was most adamant
about American nuclear superiority, but his trinity included
the Catholic Church and nonproliferation." A nuclear-armed

106 THE SAMSON OPTION

Israel did not fit into that vision: "He thought an Israeli bomb
would lead to escalation and then you could just cross off oil
from the Middle East for years." There were other virtues, of
course, that appealed to Kennedy: McCone would join the ad-
ministration with enormous credibility with the press, with
the Congress, and especially with Dwight Eisenhower, who
was quietly going about life in retirement in Gettysburg, Penn-
sylvania. "Kennedy never took a major foreign policy move
without checking it out with Eisenhower," recalled Elder,
who, when he retired from the CIA in 1983, was executive sec-
retary of the National Foreign Intelligence Board. "He was
terrified of having Ike on the other side."

In one of their first meetings after McCone took the job,
Kennedy complained about the most recent of Ben-Gurion's
letters, which continued to shrug off the issue of international
inspection of Dimona, the White House's key demand that had
been initially articulated by Bill Crawford. Ben-Gurion's letter
was "a waffle," Walt Elder recalled. "It wasn't strong. Kennedy
talked to McCone about it and McCone said, 'Write him a stiff
note. Mention the United States' international obligations, and
our suspicions of the French. Lay it on the line.' " The Presi-
dent followed McCone's advice and received what he perceived
as yet another rude response: "Ben-Gurion in effect said, 'Bug
off, this is none of your business,' " said Elder, who spent years
after McCone left the CIA preparing and indexing all of his
still-classified personal files.* At that point, McCone insisted to
the President that he could "take care of it. The attaches and
the State Department can't do it," Elder recalled McCone tell-
ing the President, referring to the need to get an answer to the
most important question about Dimona: was there an under-
ground chemical reprocessing plant at Dimona? "Turn it over
to me." Kennedy did so, and McCone began a two-track opera-
tion.

The first step was another series of U-2 missions; its far more

* McCone, said Elder, ended up being very close to Kennedy: "He saw him literally
whenever he wanted. He would call the White House and say, 'I'm on my way to see
the President/ " After such meetings, McCone would immediately dictate a detailed
memorandum to the file, which was eventually made available to Elder for further
action and safekeeping.

A PRESIDENTIAL STRUGGLE 107

risky and ambitious counterpart was an attempt to infiltrate
spies into Dimona and, with luck, into the suspected reproces-
sing plant. "It was one hell of an operation," Elder said. "Even
the station chiefs [in Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East]
didn't know of it. We ran it right out of McCone's office."
McCone's orders were, in retrospect, almost cavalier, his for-
mer executive assistant said: McCone, recognizing that the Is-
raelis were keeping close watch over the American intelligence
officers inside their country, told his men, "We can't do our job
without leaving traces. Do the best job you can." Running
American intelligence operatives inside Israel posed an ex-
traordinary risk, as McCone and Kennedy had to know: any
exposure would have led to a violent domestic backlash inside
America. It also could end the debate about what Israel was, or
was not, doing at Dimona.

The operation was not compromised — but it also didn't
work. The CIA's on-the-ground agents, obviously recruited
from a foreign country, were unable to get inside. "I could not
say we had an agent who physically saw a bomb inside
Dimona," Elder acknowledged.

The U-2 once again proved that photographs — even sensa-
tional ones — weren't enough. By December 1961, CIA officials
had set up a new agency, the National Photo Interpretation
Center (NPIC), with Arthur Lundahl in charge, and assigned it
the mission of providing more sophisticated photo intelligence.
NPIC came through early with a huge photographic mosaic of
Israel, capturing not only Dimona but all other possible nu-
clear facilities. "It was as big as two French doors," Elder re-
called. "Kennedy loved it." The only problem was that the new
set of photographs did little to move the basic issue: there was
no way to see underground in Dimona. "McCone said that
based on his evidence," Elder said, "there is no external evi-
dence of a nuclear capability. There's no evidence of a weapons
plant." McCone was still skeptical, Elder added, telling the
President, "Given their [the Israelis'] attitude toward inspec-
tion, you can't trust them."

Dimona remained a major impediment to another of Ken-
nedy's early foreign policy ambitions — rapprochement with

108 THE SAMSON OPTION

Nasser's Egypt. Increased economic aid and a series of private
letters had led to a warming of relations by mid-1962, and senior
Egyptian officials were reassuring the White House that they
also desired improved relations, within the context of
nonalignment. Nasser, badly rattled by the prospect of a nu-
clear Israel, had responded to the December i960 relevations
about Dimona by publicly insisting that Egypt would never
permit Israel to be its superior; if necessary, he said, Egypt
would attack and "destroy the base of aggression even at the
price of four million casualties." The question of Dimona was
repeatedly raised at Arab League conferences on defense and
foreign ministry issues during 1961, with no resolution — except
for a shared Arab determination to build up conventional arms.
The Kennedy administration reassured the Egyptians that it
would continue to press until it obtained IAEA inspection
rights to Dimona, and would provide a summary — with Israel's
agreement — of the findings to Nasser.

But securing inspection rights remained impossible. Ben-Gu-
rion had no intention of permitting a legitimate inspection —
for obvious reasons. His first line of defense was straightfor-
ward: political pressure, in the person of Abe Feinberg. "I
fought the strongest battle of my career to keep them from a
full inspection," Feinberg recalled. "I violently intervened not
once but half a dozen times." He had been tipped off about the
inspection demands by Myer Feldman and relayed his political
complaints through him; he said he never discussed the matter
directly with the President. The message was anything but
subtle: insisting on an inspection of Dimona would result in
less support in the 1964 presidential campaign. This message,
Feinberg said, was given directly to Robert S. McNamara, the
secretary of state, and Paul H. Nitze, then a senior defense
aide: "I met with them together and said, 'You've got to keep
your nose out of it.' "

Nitze, in a subsequent interview, did not recall that meeting,
but he did remember a later one-on-one confrontation with
Feinberg over Dimona. The Israelis wanted to purchase ad-
vanced U.S. fighter aircraft: "I said no, unless they come clean
about Dimona. Then suddenly this fellow Feinberg comes into
my office and says right out, 'You can't do that to us.' I said,

A PRESIDENTIAL STRUGGLE 109

'I've already done it.' Feinberg said, TU see to it that you get
overruled.' I remember throwing him out of the office."

Three days later, Nitze added, "I got a call from McNamara.
He said he'd been instructed to tell me to change my mind and
release the planes. And I did." Nitze hesitated a moment and
added: "Feinberg had the power and brought it to bear. I was
surprised McNamara did this." McNamara, subsequently
asked about the incident, would only say cryptically: "I can
understand why Israel wanted a nuclear bomb. There is a basic
problem there. The existence of Israel has been a question
mark in history, and that's the essential issue."

In the end, however, Feinberg and Ben-Gurion could not
overcome the continued presidential pressure for inspection of
Dimona. Ben-Gurion's categorical public denial of any weap-
ons intent at Dimona had left the Israeli government few op-
tions: refusing access would undercut the government's
credibility and also lend credence to the newly emerging anti-
nuclear community inside Israel. In late 1961 a group of promi-
nent Israeli scholars and scientists — including two former
members of Bergmann's Atomic Energy Commission — had
privately banded together to form the Committee for the
Denuclearization of the Middle East. The new group's agenda
was straightforward: to stop Israel's search for the nuclear op-
tion and to defuse the secrecy surrounding the activities at
Dimona. In April 1962, the committee went public, stating that
it considered the development of nuclear weapons u to consti-
tute a danger to Israel and to peace in the Middle East." It
urged United Nations intervention "to prevent military nu-
clear production." Others, who knew precisely what was going
on at Dimona, were equally critical: Pinhas Lavon, former de-
fense minister, eager to build housing for the constant stream
of refugees, sarcastically complained to a Dimona official in the
early 1960s, "We're taking five hundred million dollars away
from settling the Galilee [in northern Israel] and instead we
build a bomb."

The most important factor, clearly, in Ben-Gurion's decision
to permit the inspections was the Kennedy administration's
decision in mid-1962 to authorize the sale of Hawk surface-to-air
missiles to Israel. The United States had provided Israel with

110 THE SAMSON OPTION

specialized military training and sensitive electronic gear in the
past, but sale of the Hawk — considered an advanced defensive
weapon — was a major departure from past policy of selling no
weaponry to Israel, and, as Israel had to hope, could lead to
future sales of offensive American arms. The administration
had spent months secretly reviewing and analyzing the Hawk
sale and carefully laying the political groundwork in an at-
tempt to avoid a political explosion in the Middle East. Armin
Meyer, now the deputy assistant secretary of state for Near
East and South Asian affairs, recalled that a special presidential
message about Israel was sent in June to a regional meeting in
Athens of American ambassadors serving in the Middle East,
in which Kennedy reported that "it was necessary for him to
do something special for Israel." The President solicited the
group's advice on four options, all of which, Meyer recalled,
"would have adverse effects in the Arab world." The ambassa-
dors chose the Hawk sale as "least damaging" to American
interests, and it was agreed that Egypt and other Arab nations
would be informed in advance.

What Kennedy did not tell his ambassadors was that inspec-
tion rights to Dimona were at stake. That message was person-
ally relayed to Ben-Gurion by Myer Feldman, who was
dispatched in August to inform the Israeli government of the
sale and what Jack Kennedy wanted in return. Feldman, asked
about his mission, said that it would be "too strong" to suggest
that the inspection of Dimona was a "quid pro quo" in return
for the Hawks. "It was more like," explained Feldman, " 'We're
going to show you how accommodating we are. This is what
we want.' Israel said, 'This is a good friend and we're going to
let you in.' " Feldman himself was taken on a private tour of
the reactor at Dimona that week.

There was one major concession by Washington. Dimona did
not have to be inspected by the International Atomic Energy
Agency. Ben-Gurion had insisted in his private exchanges with
Kennedy that such inspections would violate Israel's sover-
eignty. The White House eventually agreed to send a specially
assembled American inspection team into Dimona. That agree-
ment was further softened by a second concession that, in es-
sence, guaranteed that the whole procedure would be little

A PRESIDENTIAL STRUGGLE III

more than a whitewash, as the President and his senior advisers
had to understand: the American inspection team would have
to schedule its visits well in advance, and with the full acquies-
cence of Israel. There would be no spot checks permitted.

Ben-Gurion took no chances: the American inspectors — most
of them experts in nuclear reprocessing — would be provided
with a Potemkin Village and never know it.

The Israeli scheme, based on plans supplied by the French,
was simple: a false control room was constructed at Dimona,
complete with false control panels and computer-driven mea-
suring devices that seemed to be gauging the thermal output of
a twenty-four-megawatt reactor (as Israel claimed Dimona to
be) in full operation. There were extensive practice sessions in
the fake control room, as Israeli technicians sought to avoid any
slips when the Americans arrived. The goal was to convince
the inspectors that no chemical reprocessing plant existed or
was possible. One big fear was that the Americans would seek
to inspect the reactor core physically, and presumably discover
that Dimona was utilizing large amounts of heavy water —
much of it illicitly obtained from France and Norway — and
obviously operating the reactor at far greater output than the
acknowledged twenty-four megawatts. It was agreed that the
inspection team would not be permitted to enter the core "for
safety reasons." In Abe Feinberg's view, Kennedy's unyielding
demand for an inspection had left Israel with no option: "It
was part of my job to tip them off that Kennedy was insisting
on this. So they gave him a scam job."

The American team, following a pattern that would be re-
peated until the inspections came to an end in 1969, spent days
at Dimona, climbing through the various excavations — many
facilities had yet to be constructed — but finding nothing. They
did not question the fact that the reactor core was off-limits and
gave no sign that they were in any way suspicious of the con-
trol room. The Israelis even stationed a few engineers in a con-
cealed area in the control room to monitor the machinery and
make sure that nothing untoward took place.

Another aspect of the cover-up was made much easier by the
fact that none of the Americans spoke or understood Hebrew.

112 THE SAMSON OPTION

One former Israeli official recalled that his job was to interpret
for the American team. "I was part of the cover-up team. One
of the engineers would start talking too much" in front of the
Americans, the official said, and he would tell him, in seem-
ingly conversational Hebrew, " 'Listen, you mother-fucker,
don't answer that question.' The Americans would think I was
translating."

The Americans were led by Floyd L. Culler, Jr., a leading
expert in the science of nuclear reprocessing who was then
deputy director of the Chemical Technology Division at the
Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, where the first
uranium for American nuclear weapons had been enriched. At
the time, Culler said, he reported to the White House that the
reactor he and his colleagues inspected was nothing more than
a "standard reactor. All the elements were counted and
tagged." Culler, who retired in 1989 as president of the Electri-
cal Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, seemed
surprised but not shocked upon being informed that his team
had been duped by a false control room. "It's possible to make a
system appear that it's controlling something when it's not," he
explained, adding that simulated control rooms have been
widely and effectively used for training purposes in reactor
systems worldwide. Culler was far more disturbed to learn that
by i960 the CIA's photo interpretation team had concluded that
a site was being excavated at Dimona for a chemical reproces-
sing plant and had even attempted to measure the amount of
dirt being scooped. Such intelligence had not been provided to
him, he said, and should have been.

Culler shrugged off the Israeli cheating as inevitable, but not
necessary. "It's not possible to make archaeological findings
about what was going on just by seeing footprints," he ex-
plained. "No one really has that much wisdom." He viewed his
inspection as "part of the game of wearing away, of finding
ways to not reach the point of taking action" against Israel's
nuclear weapons program. He is not at all convinced today, he
said, that Israel was wrong to develop its own independent
deterrent.

"They were terrified that they'd be bombed," Culler re-
called. After the first inspection in 1962, he said, "I was asked by

A PRESIDENTIAL STRUGGLE 113

an Israeli to raise the question" of an American nuclear um-
brella upon his return to Washington. Culler wrote his secret
report on the inspection during stopovers in Athens and Rome,
and dutifully included an account of the Israeli concern. The
CIA u got to me as soon as I got off the plane" in Washington,
he added, and he was rushed into a debriefing. There was no
further talk of nuclear umbrellas on subsequent inspections,
and Culler eventually came to ask himself the following rhetor-
ical question: Would the United States initiate nuclear war to
protect any country in the Middle East, or India, or Pakistan,
or Argentina? "We were all in a bind," Culler said. "We have to
be careful in assigning blame. It may be a story, but there is no
right or wrong."

The constant bargaining over Dimona was a factor in aborting
an ambitious Kennedy administration initiative to resolve the
Palestinian refugee issue. Like all American Presidents since
1948, Kennedy came into office with a belief that he could find a
way to bring long-term peace to the Middle East. As a House
and Senate member, Kennedy had always been a public sup-
porter of Israel, but he had repeatedly expressed understanding
of the aspirations of Arab nationalism and sympathy for the
plight of the Palestinian refugees. For example, in a February
1958 speech before a Jewish group, he declared that the refugee
question "must be resolved through negotiations, resettlement,
and outside international assistance. But to recognize the prob-
lem is quite different from saying that the problem is insoluble
short of the destruction of Israel ... or must be solved by
Israel alone."

State Department Arabists were pleasantly surprised early in
1961 to get word from the White House, according to Armin
Meyer, that "just because 90 percent of the Jewish vote had
gone for Kennedy, it didn't mean he was in their pocket." Ken-
nedy asked for innovative ideas, and the department suggested
that another try be made to resolve the Palestinian refugee
problem in the West Bank and Gaza Strip stemming from Is-
rael's victory in the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli War. The United Na-
tions had approved Resolution 194 after the war, directing that

114 THE SAMSON OPTION

the refugees had to be given the option of returning to Israel if
they wished to do so.

The State Department came up with a new twist, in which
individual refugees would be asked in a confidential question-
naire if they wanted to return to a former home in Israel.
Those who ruled out a return would be compensated by Israel
for the seizure of their property and be given a chance to emi-
grate to another Arab country or anywhere else in the world.
There had been bitter protests by Arabs during the Eisen-
hower years over the failure to implement the United Nations
resolution. State Department studies on the resettlement issue
showed that no more than 70,000 to 100,000 Palestinians would
opt to return to their seized Israeli homesteads over ten years, a
number that was deemed to be manageable. The Israelis also
would be given veto power over every returning Palestinian, in
an attempt to minimize the security risk.

Kennedy had discussed his Arab initiative with a far from
enthusiastic Ben-Gurion in their May 1961 New York meeting.
A few weeks later, President Kennedy authorized a major —
and highly secret — State Department effort to implement the
new variant of Resolution 194; over the next eighteen months,
said Armin Meyer, a workable compromise was accepted by
the Arab states and endorsed by the White House. Meyer, who
served as ambassador to Jordan, Iran, and Japan before retiring
from the Foreign Service in 1972, is convinced today that Ben-
Gurion's decision not to torpedo the resettlement project was
based on his belief that the Arabs would never accept direct
negotiations on any issue with Israel; any discussion of repatri-
ation, in their eyes, would be tantamount to formal recogni-
tion. When the expected last-minute Arab rejections did not
come, Meyer said, "Israel panicked," and provoked a wave of
intense political pressure from American Jews upon the White
House. In the end, President Kennedy — already in a war with
Ben-Gurion over Dimona — backed down, bitterly disap-
pointing his State Department supporters by doing so.* The

* There were many in the State Department, however, who understood from the
outset that the resettlement plan had little chance. "We were struggling with bigger
issues at the time," explained Phillips Talbot, then Armin Meyer's boss as the assistant
secretary of state for Near East and South Asian affairs. "It was not at the top of my

A PRESIDENTIAL STRUGGLE 115

Palestinians would remain stateless refugees in their squalid
homes in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. "I think we could have
been spared all this terrorism business and other miseries, ,, said
Meyer, "if we had gone ahead with that project at that time."
But, at that time, getting Dimona inspected seemed more
important.

priority list." Talbot recalled President Kennedy's comment after an early briefing:
"Phil, that's a great plan with only one flaw — you've never had to run for election."

9

Years off Pressure

John Kennedy, profoundly committed to the principle
of nonproliferation, continued throughout 1962 to pressure
Ben-Gurion about international inspection and continued to
receive the prime minister's bland and irritating assurances
that Israel had no intention of becoming an atomic power. The
President was far too politically astute not to understand, as he
angrily told his friend Charles Bartlett, that the Israeli "sons of
bitches lie to me constantly about their nuclear capability."
One solution was to help get Ben-Gurion, then embattled in
the most serious crisis of his political career, out of office.

A few days after Christmas 1962, Kennedy made what
amounted to a direct move against the prime minister's leader-
ship. He invited Foreign Minister Golda Meir, one of Ben-
Gurion's leading critics inside the cabinet and the Mapai Party,
to his Palm Beach, Florida, home for a seventy-minute private
talk. Meir made no secret of the fact that she resented Ben-
Gurion for permitting his acolytes, Shimon Peres and Moshe
Dayan, to operate behind the back of the foreign ministry; she
and other party members who had been born in Eastern Eu-
rope, such as Levi Eshkol, the treasury minister, were con-
vinced that Ben-Gurion chose to rely on young men such as
Peres and Dayan only because they would be more reluctant to
stand up to him.

The declassified memorandum on the Kennedy-Meir meet-
ing contains no specific mention of nuclear weapons (some
paragraphs were deleted for national security reasons), but
there is little doubt that Kennedy pointedly raised the issue.
The memorandum further shows that Kennedy made an ex-
traordinary private commitment to Israel's defense. "We are

118 THE SAMSON OPTION

asking the cooperation of Israel in the same way that we are
cooperating with Israel to help meet its needs," Kennedy told
Meir. "Israel doubtless thinks of itself as deeply endangered.
. . . Our position in these matters may seem to be asking Israel
to neglect its interests. The reason we do it is not that we are
unfriendly to Israel; but in order to help more effectively. I
think it is quite clear that in case of an invasion the United
States would come to the support of Israel. We have that capac-
ity and it is growing." It was language no Israeli had ever heard
from Dwight Eisenhower.

Moments later, according to the memorandum, Kennedy —
anticipating the chronic crisis that would be created by the
refugees of the West Bank and Gaza Strip — expressed his regret
that the Arab resettlement plan had failed and said his adminis-
tration would not give up trying to find some solution to the
refugee situation. He added that the United States "is really
interested in Israel. . . . What we want from Israel arises be-
cause our relationship is a two-way street. Israel's security in
the long run depends in part on what it does with the Arabs,
but also on us."

Kennedy's commitment to Golda Meir, along with his deci-
sion to sell the Hawk missiles, amounted to a turning point in
American foreign policy toward Israel — one little noted even
today. The Kennedy offer might have been enough, if Israel's
goal had been to forge a military partnership with the United
States. But Israel's needs were far more basic.

John McCone remained agitated about the Israeli bomb and the
failure of his agency to determine whether a chemical reproces-
sing plant was buried underground at Dimona. He also was
more outspoken than any other Kennedy insider on the issue;
at a 1962 Washington dinner party he publicly reprimanded
Charles Lucet, a senior French foreign ministry official, for
France's role in the Israeli bomb. Lucet, who had served as
deputy ambassador in Washington in the late 1950s (and would
become ambassador in 1965), was seated near McCone, who at
one point abruptly asked: "So, Mr. Lucet, your country is
building a reprocessing plant for the Israelis?" Lucet replied
with what was France's public position on the issue: "No, we

YEARS OF PRESSURE I 19

are building a reactor." McCone then turned his back on Lucet
and did not speak to him for the rest of the evening; it was,
given France's high standing with the President and his wife,
who were both Francophiles, a pointed rebuff.*

Kennedy was constantly raising the nuclear issue in his dis-
cussions with senior Israelis — and constantly getting boiler-
plate answers. In early April 1963, Shimon Peres flew to the
capital to meet at the White House on the still-pending Hawk
sale, and was directly asked by the President about Israeli in-
tentions. An Israeli nuclear bomb, Kennedy said, "would cre-
ate a very perilous situation. That's why we have been diligent
about keeping an eye on your effort in the atomic field. What
can you tell me about that?" Peres's answer was a fabrication
that would become the official Israeli response for years to
come: "I can tell you forthrightly that we will not introduce
atomic weapons into the region. We certainly won't be the first
to do so. We have no interest in that. On the contrary, our
interest is in de-escalating the armament tension, even in total
disarmament."

The administration's lack of specific information about Is-
raeli intentions was complicated by the fact, as the President
had to know, that many senior members of Congress supported
the concept of a nuclear-armed Israel. A few days before his
meeting with the President, Peres had discussed nuclear weap-
ons with Senator Stuart Symington, a Kennedy supporter and
ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and
had been told, as Peres told his biographer: "Don't be a bunch
of fools. Don't stop making atomic bombs. And don't listen to
the administration. Do whatever you think best."

Israel was doing just that. The physical plant at Dimona con-
tinued to mature. The reactor went critical — that is, began a
sustained chain reaction — sometime in 1962 with no significant
problems, and was capable of being operated at more than sev-
enty megawatts, far greater than the twenty-four megawatts

* Lucet was offended by McCone's action and, upon his return to Paris, relayed the
incident to Bertrand Goldschmidt. "He asked me if we could separate France from
responsibility for the [Israeli] bomb," Goldschmidt recalled with a laugh. "I said, 'No.
Not only did we take the girl when she was a virgin, but we made her pregnant.' "

120 THE SAMSON OPTION

publicly acknowledged by the Ben-Gurion government. Run-
ning the plant hotter would create more plutonium by-product
to be reprocessed, and a larger nuclear weapons stockpile than
any outsider could anticipate. Later that year, the private
French construction companies at Dimona, always eager for
business, began once again to work on the vital chemical
reprocessing plant underground at Dimona — despite de
Gaulle's insistence that France would have nothing more to do
with the Israeli bomb. The French would build at a furious
pace for the next three years, at high pay, finishing the
reprocessing plant and the elaborate waste treatment and
safety facilities that were essential. French technicians and en-
gineers, who had begun drifting away, were back in force in
Beersheba, whose population was growing steadily (it reached
seventy thousand by 1970).

Israeli and French scientists continued to cooperate at the
French nuclear test site in the Sahara, as the experiments be-
came more weapons-oriented. By late 1961, the French had be-
gun a series of underground tests and were perfecting a series
of miniaturized warheads for use in aircraft and, eventually,
missiles. There were further tests in the early 1960s of a more
advanced Shavit rocket system, with no more public announce-
ments; CIA analysts assumed that the long-range rocket was
meant for military use. And in 1963 Israel paid $100 million to
the privately owned Dassault Company of France, then one of
the world's most successful missile and aircraft firms, for the
joint development and manufacture of twenty-five medium-
range Israeli missiles. It was anticipated that the missile, to be
known to the American intelligence community as the Jeri-
cho I, would be able to deliver a miniaturized nuclear warhead
to targets three hundred miles away.

By spring of 1963, Kennedy's relationship with Ben-Gurion re-
mained at an impasse over Dimona, and the correspondence
between the two became increasingly sour. None of those let-
ters has been made public* Ben-Gurion's responses were being

* The Kennedy exchanges with Ben-Gurion also have not been released to U.S.
government officials with full clearances who have attempted to write classified histo-
ries of the period. "The culminate result" of such rigid security, one former American

YEARS OF PRESSURE 121

drafted by Yuval Neeman, a physicist and defense ministry in-
telligence officer who was directly involved in the nuclear
weapons program. "It was not a friendly exchange," Neeman
recalled. "Kennedy was writing like a bully. It was brutal."

The President made sure that the Israeli prime minister paid
for his defiance. In late April, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq united to
form the short-lived Arab Federation; such unity was Ben-Gu-
rion's recurring nightmare. He instinctively turned to Wash-
ington, and proposed in a letter to the President that the
United States and Soviet Union join forces to publicly declare
the territorial integrity and security of every Middle Eastern
state. "If you can spare an hour or two for a discussion with me
on the situation and possible solutions," Ben-Gurion asked, "I
am prepared to fly to Washington at your convenience and
without any publicity." Kennedy rejected Ben-Gurion's offer
of a state visit and expressed "real reservations," according to
Ben-Gurion's biography, about any joint statement on the issue
with the Soviets. Five days later, a disappointed Ben-Gurion
sent a second note to Kennedy: "Mr. President, my people have
the right to exist . . . and this existence is in danger." He re-
quested that the United States sign a security treaty with
Israel. Again the answer was no, and it was clear to the Mapai
Party that Ben-Gurion's leadership and his intractability about
Dimona were serious liabilities in Washington. Golda Meir ac-
knowledged to Ben-Gurion's biographer, "We knew about
these approaches. . . . We said nothing, even though we won-
dered."

A few weeks later, on June 16, 1963, Ben-Gurion abruptly
resigned as prime minister and defense minister, ending his
fifteen-year reign as Israel's most influential public official.

The many accounts of Ben-Gurion's resignation have accu-
rately described the resurgence of scandal, public distrust, and
polarization that marked his last years. The Lavon Affair, stem-
ming from the series of pre-Suez War sabotage activities inside
Egypt, had come by the early 1960s to dominate much of the
public agenda inside Israel, as new revelations came to light

official lamented, "is a very poorly informed bureaucracy— even if there are people
willing to buck the system and ask taboo questions."

122 THE SAMSON OPTION

suggesting that low-level officials in the defense ministry might
have falsified documents and given misleading testimony in an
effort to accuse Pinhas Lavon, the former defense minister, of
authorizing the operation. Lavon, still one of the most influen-
tial members of the Mapai Party, was serving as head of the
Histadrut, the powerful federation of labor unions (85 percent
of the work force in Israel belonged to unions) that also con-
trolled a large segment of Israeli industry. Lavon asked Ben-
Gurion for exoneration. Ben-Gurion refused, and Lavon took
his case to the Knesset's foreign affairs and defense committee.
Once at the Knesset, he charged that Ben-Gurion, Peres, and
Dayan had undermined civilian authority over the military;
then he made sure that his allegations were leaked to the press.
With those actions, Lavon broke two cardinal rules of Israeli
politics: he discussed defense matters in public and he failed to
keep the party dispute behind closed doors. The next step was
a cabinet-level committee, set up at Levi Eshkol's instigation,
that was to recommend procedures for investigating the Lavon
allegations. But the committee, instead of dealing with the pro-
cedural issue, cleared Lavon of authorizing the failed operation
in Egypt.

Ben-Gurion accused the committee of overstepping its man-
date, resigned once again, and called for a new government in
an unsuccessful effort to annul the decision. Many of those who
opposed Ben-Gurion, especially Levi Eshkol and Pinhas Sapir,
also opposed Lavon's violation of political norms and success-
fully moved for his dismissal from the Histadrut job. The pri-
mary goal of the Mapai Party leaders at that moment was to get
the tiresome affair behind them before the Israeli citizenry, dis-
tressed by the continuing discussion of so many government
secrets, became convinced that Mapai was unable to manage
the country effectively. Ben-Gurion, arguing that someone had
lied, continued to insist, however, that a judicial inquiry be
convened. The public came to see him as a stubborn old man
who was trying to keep the issue alive; the affair tarnished his
reputation and made what seemed to be his dictatorial methods
of running the government more vulnerable than ever. The
clear victors in the scandal were Eshkol, Sapir, and Golda
Meir, who emerged with higher public standing and with re-

YEARS OF PRESSURE 123

newed determination not to permit Ben-Gurion to bypass
them in favor of Dayan and Peres. Dayan and Peres joined
Ben-Gurion as losers: Dayan never became prime minister, and
Peres waited twenty years for the job.

A second public scandal surfaced in 1962 and 1963 when it was
reported that Egypt had developed — with support from some
West German scientists — what were alleged to be advanced
missiles capable of hitting Israel. Golda Meir and her support-
ers took a hard line on the Egyptian-West German activities,
warning that the coalition posed a danger to Israel's national
security. Ben-Gurion was far more skeptical of the threat posed
by Egypt's dalliance with West German scientists and, in his
public statements, emphasized the contribution that West Ger-
many had made to Israeli security. What the public did not
know was that Ben-Gurion had just completed a successful,
and secret, negotiation with West German Chancellor Konrad
Adenauer for modern weaponry, including small arms, heli-
copters, and spare parts. For Ben-Gurion, there now was "an-
other Germany," profoundly different from the Germany of
Hitler's time and far more willing than France and America to
keep Israel armed. Ben-Gurion's point of view was ignored in
the wake of press hysteria over the German aid to Egypt, with
newspaper talk of German "death rays" and renewed "final
solutions" — all of which turned out to be exaggerated. The
public campaign over the West German help for Egypt soon
evolved into a wave of criticism and scorn for Ben-Gurion and
his notion of "another Germany." Ben-Gurion's colleagues in
the Mapai Party — especially Golda Meir, who, like many Israe-
lis, wanted nothing to do with Germans — joined in the
attack.*

The controversy over Lavon and West Germany appeared to

* The German issue was a never-ending and emotional one for a nation led by
survivors of the Holocaust; any diplomatic contact resulted in a crisis. There had been
street riots in front of the Knesset in 1952 to protest the initial Israeli-West German
talks over compensation for the loss of Jewish lives and property in the Holocaust.
Cash-starved Israel eventually accepted more than $800 million in reparations. Ten-
sions remained, despite the flow of money: an Israeli violinist was later stabbed on the
street after performing the music of Richard Strauss in public. In June 1959, a furor
over the sale of Israeli munitions to West Germany resulted in another brief resigna-
tion by Ben-Gurion and yet another call for new elections. The Mapai Party held on to
its Knesset majority, and Ben-Gurion, confidence vote in hand, returned to office.

124 THE SAMSON OPTION

be more than enough to convince Ben-Gurion to leave public
life and return once again to his kibbutz in the desert. Tired
and distracted after years of leadership, the Old Man was look-
ing forward to writing his memoirs and telling his version of
the history of Israel and Zionism. There was no way for the
Israeli public, surfeited with accounts of Lavon and the Ger-
man scandal, to suspect that there was yet another factor in
Ben-Gurion's demise: his increasingly bitter impasse with Ken-
nedy over a nuclear-armed Israel.

Levi Eshkol, the new prime minister, was, like Ben-Gurion, a
product of Eastern Europe (he was born in 1895) w h° turned to
Palestine and Zionism at an early age. There were few other
similarities. Eshkol was far more democratic, both in politics
and in personality; the notion of compromise — so foreign to
Ben-Gurion — returned to the leadership of the government
and the Mapai Party. Eshkol moved quickly to lighten govern-
ment control of the press and also set up an independent broad-
casting authority to ease the government's monitoring and
censorship of the state-run television network — reforms that
Ben-Gurion had bitterly resisted. Most significantly, Eshkol
had spent the last eleven years as finance minister, much of it in
a struggle against funding for Dimona, and was far less com-
mitted emotionally than Ben-Gurion to the concept that hun-
dreds of millions of dollars should be spent each year on
nuclear activity to the detriment of what he and his supporters
saw as Israel's most immediate need — better weapons and
training for the army and air force.

Kennedy, confronted with intelligence reports showing that
Israel, far from slowing down its nuclear program during his
presidency, had been expanding it, wasted little time in urging
nuclear restraint on the new Israeli government; private presi-
dential messages reiterating the need for international inspec-
tion of Dimona began arriving shortly after Eshkol took office.
The President's belief in arms control had been strengthened
in the early fall of 1963 by the positive American response to the
Senate ratification of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which
banned nuclear testing in the atmosphere, underwater, and in

YEARS OF PRESSURE 125

outer space.* Continued political support for nuclear disarma-
ment meant less reason to fear the Jewish lobby. Israel's Jeri-
cho I missile was another factor in the continued White House
pressure on Eshkol. American experts considered the Jericho's
guidance system to be highly unstable and inaccurate, sug-
gesting — so the analysts concluded — that only one type of war-
head made sense.

Kennedy's persistent pressure on Israel stemmed from his be-
lief that Israel had not yet developed any nuclear weapons; that
it was not yet a proliferator. There is evidence that once Israel
actually began manufacturing bombs — as the French had done
— the President was prepared to be as pragmatic as he needed
to be. While Kennedy remained resolutely opposed to a nuclear
Israel to the end, he did change his mind about de Gaulle's
bombs. Daniel Ellsberg, who would later make public the Pen-
tagon Papers on the Vietnam War, was involved in high-level
nuclear weapons issues in 1963 as a deputy in the Pentagon's
Office of International Strategic Affairs. He recalled seeing one
morning a "Top Secret, Eyes Only" memorandum from
McGeorge Bundy to the President summarizing a change in
policy toward the French: u We would, after all," Ellsberg re-
called Bundy's memorandum stating, "cooperate with the
French and allow them to use the Nevada test site for under-
ground testing." At the time, the French had refused to sign
the Limited Test Ban Treaty, and de Gaulle had announced
that France would continue to test its bombs in the atmo-
sphere.** Kennedy's obvious goal was to bring France in line

* Arthur Schlesinger described in A Thousand Days how Kennedy, "almost by acci-
dent," raised the nuclear test ban during a speech in Billings, Montana. The President
casually praised Senator Mike J. Mansfield, the majority leader from Montana, for his
support for the treaty. "To his surprise," wrote Schlesinger, "this allusion produced
strong and sustained applause. Heartened, he [Kennedy] set forth his hope of lessening
the 4 chance of a military collision between those two great nuclear powers which
together have the power to kill three hundred million people in the short space of a
day.* The Billings response encouraged him to make the pursuit of peace increasingly
the theme of his trip."

** The French had been cut out from any postwar nuclear cooperation by the 1946
Atomic Energy Act, which prohibited the transfer of American nuclear weapons infor-
mation to any other country. In 1958, President Eisenhower recommended, and Con-
gress approved, an amendment to the 1946 act that permitted the United States to
exchange nuclear design information and fissionable materials with the British; France,
of course, was enraged by the exclusion. (Britain ended up completely dependent on

126 THE SAMSON OPTION

with the test ban treaty, whether officially signed or not. The
Bundy memorandum remained fixed in Ellsberg's memory: it
was dated November 22, 1963, the day of Kennedy's assassina-
tion in Dallas, Texas.

Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, like many Vice Presi-
dents, had been left in the dark on sensitive national security
issues by the President and his top aides. "J°lmson went ber-
serk upon being briefed in by the Agency," a former high-level
American intelligence official recalled. "He didn't know any-
thing about the problem and he cursed Kennedy for cutting
him out."*

Johnson's ties to Israel were strong long before he became
President. Two of his closest advisers, lawyers Abe Fortas
(later named to the Supreme Court) and Edwin L. Weisl, Sr.,
while not particularly religious, felt deeply about the security
of Israel. Johnson also had known of Abe Feinberg and his
fund-raising skills since the Truman years; Feinberg was
among those who had raised money for Johnson's successful
1948 campaign for the Senate.

the United States by the early 1960s for its strategic nuclear delivery vehicles, a status
that existed into the early 1990s.) The Kennedy administration continued to antagonize
the French on nuclear issues. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, distressed at
France's nuclear independence and its continued testing in the Sahara, went on a
public campaign in 1962 against the force defrappe. In a famous spring commencement
address at the University of Michigan (in which he announced that the United States
was moving away in its targeting from massive retaliation to limited nuclear war),
McNamara criticized "weak national nuclear forces" as being "dangerous, expensive,
prone to obsolescence, and lacking in credibility as a deterrent." Instead, he insisted,
the nations of Europe should buy American arms and rockets to build up their conven-
tional forces and let the United States handle the issue of nuclear deterrence. He had
delivered essentially the same message a few weeks earlier in Athens, enraging not only
de Gaulle, but America's NATO allies. ". . . [A]ll the allies are angry," British Prime
Minister Harold Macmillan wrote in his diary, "with the American proposal that we
should buy rockets to the tune of umpteen million dollars, the warheads to be under
American control. This is not a European rocket. It's a racket of the American indus-
try. . . . It's rather sad, because the Americans (who are naive and inexperienced) are
up against centuries of diplomatic skill and finesse." Continued U.S. opposition to the
force de frappe was one reason for de Gaulle's 1966 decision to remove France from
NATO's military organization and evict NATO headquarters and all allied military
facilities from French territory.

* Johnson similarly had been excluded from the intense meetings and discussions
during the Cuban missile crisis the year before, and it was left to John McCone to tell
the Vice President about the issue just hours before it was to be made public. "Johnson
was pissed," McCone later told Walt Elder, and, "harrumphing and belching," threat-
ened not to support the President on the issue if the Senate leadership did not. McCone
assured the Vice President that the Senate was indeed backing the President, and the
placated Vice President reversed course.

YEARS OF PRESSURE 127

There was a much deeper link, however, that had nothing to
do with campaign funds: Johnson had visited the Nazi concen-
tration camp at Dachau while on a congressional fact-finding
trip at the end of World War II. His wife, Lady Bird, told a
Texas historian years after Johnson's death that he had re-
turned "just shaken, bursting with overpowering revulsion and
incredulous horror at what he had seen. Hearing about it is one
thing, being there is another." There are no photographs of the
visit, but Johnson's congressional archives contain a full set of
U.S. Army photos taken two days after the liberation of the
death camp on April 30, 1945.

Johnson's sensitivity to the plight of European Jews had be-
gun even before World War II when, as a young congressman
from Texas, he was urged by Jewish supporters in his home
district to cut through Washington's red tape and get asylum in
America for German refugees running for their lives. Once the
refugees got into the country, Johnson had worked hard to
keep them in, and his congressional files show that Erich Leins-
dorf, the eminent conductor, was among those whose deporta-
tion Johnson had prevented. Leinsdorf had made a stunning
American debut with New York's Metropolitan Opera in 1938,
but was scheduled to be deported late in the year when his six-
month visa was up. Deportation to Austria after the Nazi An-
schluss in Vienna meant slow death in a concentration camp.
Johnson won the respect and the financial backing of the Jew-
ish community in Texas by taking on the Leinsdorf case, and
others, and finding a way to circumvent the rules.*

President Johnson stayed loyal to his old friends. Five weeks
after assuming office, he dedicated a newly constructed Austin
synagogue, Agudas Achim, as a favor to James Novy, a long-
time Texas political ally and Zionist leader who was chairman
of the building committee. He was the first American Presi-
dent to do so, yet only a few newspapers took note of the event.
In his introduction, Novy, once the Southwest regional chair-

* Jews in Europe found it extremely difficult in the 1930s to get visas for the United
States, although American immigration quotas went unfilled. Between 1933 and 1938, for
example, only 27,000 German Jews were granted entry visas to the United States, far
less than the 129,875 permissible under the quotas. More on Johnson's early role in
support of Jews can be found in "Prologue: LBJ's Foreign Affairs Background," an
unpublished 1989 University of Texas doctoral thesis by Louis S. Gomolak.

128 THE SAMSON OPTION

man of the Zionist Organization of America, looked at the
President and said, u We can't ever thank him enough for all
those Jews he got out of Germany during the days of Hitler."
Lady Bird Johnson later explained: u Jews have been woven
into the warp and woof of all his years."

Lyndon Johnson was quickly consumed by the Vietnam War,
and what he saw as the struggle of a small democratic nation
against the forces of Communism. But Israel likewise was per-
ceived as a besieged democracy standing up to the Soviet
Union and its clients in the Arab world. Johnson's strong emo-
tional ties to Israel and his belief that Soviet arms were altering
the balance of power in the Middle East drove him to become
the first American President to supply Israel with offensive
weapons and the first publicly to commit America to its de-
fense. The American Jewish community eventually would be
torn apart by Johnson's continued prosecution of the Vietnam
War, with many Jewish leaders insisting that Johnson's
steadfast support of Israel entitled him to loyalty on Vietnam,
while others continued to oppose the war on principle.

In the early years of his presidency, however, Johnson ech-
oed Kennedy's policy by urging Israel to submit Dimona to
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection. His
support for nonproliferation and his desire to end the Cold War
were motivated by his belief that only by a relaxing of interna-
tional tensions could he achieve his ultimate goal — the exten-
sion of the New Deal to all Americans. A nuclear Israel was
unacceptable: it could mean a nuclear Egypt, increased Soviet
involvement in the Middle East, and perhaps war.

10

The Samson Option

Levi Eshkol's goal was to find a middle ground be-
tween the White House, with its insistence on international
inspections, and the pro-nuclear faction of the Mapai Party, led
by David Ben-Gurion, who, from retirement, turned his
insistence on an Israeli nuclear arsenal into a political Last
Hurrah.

The prime minister's dilemma was not whether to go nu-
clear, but when and at what cost, in terms of the competing
need to equip and train the conventional units of the army,
navy, and air force.

The debate over the nuclear option had surfaced in the na-
tion's newspapers, in deliberately innocuous language, long be-
fore Eshkol took office. In mid-1962, for example, Shimon Peres
and former army chief of staff Moshe Dayan, then Ben-Gu-
rion's minister of agriculture, took advantage of the funeral of a
prominent Zionist military leader to warn their peers that Is-
rael's existence was linked to the "technological achievements
of the 1970s" and investment in "equipment of the future." In
April 1963, Dayan wrote an article for Maariv, the afternoon
newspaper, urging the Israeli arms industry to keep pace with
Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's effort to build nu-
clear weapons. "In the era of rockets with conventional and
unconventional warheads," Dayan wrote, "we must diligently
develop those weapons so that we don't lag."

Ben-Gurion was even more explicit in an interview with col-
umnist C. L. Sulzberger of the New York Times five months after
leaving office. Sulzberger quoted Ben-Gurion's concern about a
rocket-armed Egypt and added: "As a result he [Ben-Gurion]
hints grimly that in its nearby Dimona reactor Israel itself may

130 THE SAMSON OPTION

be experimenting with military atomics." Nuclear energy can-
not be ruled out, the ex-prime minister was quoted as saying,
"because Nasser won't give up. Nor will he risk war again
until he's sure he can win. That means atomic weapons — and
he has a large desert in which to test. We can't test here."
Sulzberger's column was published on Saturday, November 16,
1963. It got to Ben-Gurion in a hurry, for on that same day he
wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times denying that
he in any way had suggested or hinted of nuclear weapons
during the interview with Sulzberger.

The Eshkol government, under pressure first from President
Kennedy and then from Johnson, worked at keeping the lid on,
and had no qualms about stretching the truth to do so. In De-
cember 1963, Shimon Yiftach, director of scientific programs
for the defense ministry, publicly told a group of Israeli science
writers that, as they had assumed, the advanced reactor at
Dimona would produce plutonium as a by-product. However,
Yiftach insisted that the Israeli government had no plans to
build a separate plant for chemically reprocessing plutonium.
Yiftach, who had been trained at the Argonne National Labo-
ratory in Illinois, was then one of Israel's leading experts in the
chemistry of plutonium and knew that French construction
companies had started up once again on the underground
reprocessing plant at Dimona.

Eshkol's apprehension about committing Israel to the mass
production of nuclear weapons did not impede the steady pro-
gress at Dimona. By mid-1964, the reactor had been in opera-
tion for almost two years and the reprocessing plant, with its
remote-controlled laboratories and computer-driven machin-
ery, was essentially completed and ready to begin producing
weapons-grade plutonium from the reactor's spent uranium
fuel rods. Israel's nuclear facilities eventually would include a
weapons assembly plant in Haifa, to the north, and a well-
fortified nuclear storage igloo at the Tel Nof fighter base near
Rehovot. Extreme security is a way of life inside the nuclear
complex, and especially at Dimona, which is under the con-
stant watch of Israeli troops, electronic detection systems, and
radar screens linked to a missile battery. All aircraft, including

THE SAMSON OPTION 131

those belonging to the Israeli Air Force, are forbidden to over-
fly the facility — and do so at perilous risk.*

Well-placed Israeli sources say that the physicists and techni-
cians at Dimona conducted at least one successful low-yield
nuclear test sometime in the mid-1960s at an underground cav-
ern near the Israeli-Egyptian border in the Negev desert. Such
detonations, known in the weapons community as "zero yield,"
produce a fission yield that is low, but discernible, and are con-
sidered to be a perfectly reliable measurement of the overall
weapons assembly system.** The test was said to have shaken
parts of the Sinai.

In early 1965, completion of the underground reprocessing
plant removed the last barrier to Israel's nuclear ambitions; it
also heightened the ongoing debate inside the government over
the issue. Completion of the reprocessing plant also made it
even more essential that Floyd Culler's annual visits to Dimona
continue to produce nothing, and the Israeli cover-up was con-
stantly being improved and embellished by Binyamin
Blumberg and his colleagues in the Office of Special Tasks.
(International inspections by the IAEA were, of course, consid-
ered and rejected in the Kennedy years.) In the mid-1960s,
Dimona's managers came up with a new method of hiding its
underground world. Members of the Israeli Defense Force's
269th General Staff Reconnaissance Unit, the most elite under-
cover group in the nation, were ordered to the nuclear facility a
few weeks before the arrival of a Culler inspection and told to
bring with them, one former 269th member recalled, "eight
semitrailers loaded with grass. It was sod — all for camouflage,"

* During the 1967 Six-Day War, an Israeli Mirage III was shot down when its pilot,
either confused or dealing with equipment problems, ventured into Dimona's airspace.
In February 1973, a Libyan airliner flew off course over the Sinai because of a naviga-
tional error and also, after ignoring or failing to see signals to land, was destroyed by
fighter planes of the Israeli Air Force, killing 108 of the 113 people aboard. Israel
claimed, without evidence, that the plane was headed for Dimona.

** Theodore B. Taylor, a physicist who designed weapons for the American nuclear
program, has written that such low-yield events are, in fact, "more stringent" than full-
yield tests because any failings or imperfections in the weapons design show up more
readily at very low yield than at high yield. Taylor, in a 1988 paper presented to an
arms control seminar in London, noted that low-yield tests are reliable enough to be
useful to countries with considerable weapons testing experience. "But," he added,
"they can also be useful to countries starting nuclear weapons development, if they
want to test without detection."

132 THE SAMSON OPTION

he added. "Our job for ten days is to cover the walks and bun-
kers with dirt, sod, and bushes. When the delegation comes,
I'm standing watering grass that looks like it's been there for
years." The scene remains vivid in his memory, the former
officer said, because he'd never before seen sod.*

There is no evidence that the American intelligence commu-
nity, and President Johnson, had any idea how close Israel was
to joining the nuclear club; the available documents show that
the President's men somehow managed to convince themselves
that by continuing to focus on IAEA inspection as the solution,
all of the nagging questions about Dimona and Israeli nuclear
proliferation would go away.** Eshkol was invited for a state
visit in June 1964 — the first visit to Washington by an Israeli
prime minister — and declassified presidential documents on file
at the LBJ Library at the University of Texas show that the
White House believed that Eshkol could be induced by the
promise of American arms to open up Dimona to the Interna-
tional Atomic Energy Agency. The President's men were, in
essence, operating in self-inflicted darkness when it came to
Dimona: they were convinced that Israel had the technical skill
to build a bomb and install it on a warhead, but no one seemed
to know whether Israel seriously intended to do so or not. It
was as if the White House believed there really were two at-
oms, one of which was peaceful.

# The CIA's photo interpreters, recalled Dino Brugioni, were far from fooled by the
sudden appearance of seemingly new grass. "It was a foolish move on their [the Israe-
lis] part and confirmed what we knew," he said. "You could see what they were doing
in the aerial photos. They planted sod, trees, and bushes. Nothing grows in Beersheba
like that. I mean, why in hell would you plant that stuff there and not around their
homes? It just spotlights activity."

## Washington may have gotten the wrong signal when the Eshkol government,
after extended negotiations, finally went forward in April 1965 with an American re-
quest to shift responsibility for inspection of the Nahal Soreq reactor to the IAEA.
American teams had conducted the inspection two times a year until then, without
incident, under the original 1955 agreement that had set up the small research reactor —
which, unlike Dimona, was constantly being used for medical and scientific research
by the staff of the Weizmann Institute. The American request was consistent with the
Johnson administration's policy of strengthening IAEA safeguards by insisting that all
countries participating in the Atoms for Peace program submit to international, and
not American, inspection. Another factor in the switch to international safeguards, a
former nonproliferation official explained, was the widespread belief that the bilateral
American inspections were weak. In return for the Israeli acquiescence, the United
States agreed to provide forty more kilograms of enriched uranium, under safeguards,
for Nahal Soreq's research program.

THE SAMSON OPTION 133

McGeorge Bundy, the national security adviser, who had
been involved with the Israeli weapons question since early
1961, professed to Johnson not to have any intelligence about
Israel's nuclear intentions, according to the White House docu-
ments, in a memorandum summarizing the potential threat to
Israel posed by Egypt's missile systems. Both nations could
make missiles, Bundy told the President on May 18, two weeks
before the Eshkol visit, but "the difference was that the Israelis
could make nuclear warheads to put on their missiles, while the
UAR [United Arab Republic] couldn't. The real issue was
whether Israel was going for a nuclear capability." It's incon-
ceivable that Bundy and his colleagues did not know what
Israel was doing with a secret nuclear reactor in the Negev.

Eshkol wanted to buy American M-48 tanks, and was de-
lighted when Johnson agreed before their summit meeting to
use the prestige of his office to persuade West Germany to sell
Israel the M-48 out of its NATO stockpiles. Such a purchase,
even if circuitous, would be a first for offensive weapons, and
would open the American arms pipeline. The Johnson men
had a fallback in case Eshkol did not agree to international
inspections, as many must have expected he would not: they
wanted Israel's permission to brief Arab nations on the results
of the annual Floyd Culler inspections.

Eshkol's mission in coming to America was to get what he
could — in the way of U.S. arms and commitments — without
making any real concessions on Dimona, which, of course, he
could not. He had told the White House prior to his arrival that
he would continue to accept the Culler inspections of Dimona,
but he wanted nothing to do with the International Atomic
Energy Agency. Israel offered the public argument, as did
other putatively nonnuclear nations, that it should not be
forced to place its national laboratories under IAEA aegis until
all of the world's nuclear powers did so. China and France
were not parties to the agreement. There was a second issue,
equally contrived: the contention that the IAEA, like the
United Nations, had systematically discriminated against Israel
in favor of the Arab nations. There were perhaps some inside
Israel who profoundly believed that such discrimination ex-
isted, but it had nothing to do with the reason the IAEA was

134 THE SAMSON OPTION

not welcome. Eshkol also drew the line at any briefing of the
Arabs.

The White House staff had to anticipate hard bargaining on
the Arab and IAEA issues; Eshkol's delegation included Peres,
who was violently opposed to international inspection and to
the sharing of anything about Dimona with the Arab world.
Nonetheless, NSC aide Robert Komer, in his pre-summit mem-
orandum to Johnson, suggested that the President try to
change Eshkol's mind on both issues. "We hope you'll person-
ally tell Eshkol they should bite the bullet now," he said of the
IAEA inspections. "Without in any way implying that Israel is
going nuclear, one has to admit that a functioning . . . reactor
plus an oncoming missile delivery system add up to an ines-
capable conclusion that Israel is at least putting itself in a posi-
tion to go nuclear. This could have the gravest repercussions
on U.S.-Israeli relations, and the earlier we try to halt it the
better chance we have. This is why your raising a to-do . . .
even if unsuccessful, will at least put Israel firmly on notice
that we may be back at it again."

Turning to the relaying of information about Dimona to the
Arabs, Komer wrote, "We're firmly convinced that Israel's ap-
parent desire to keep the Arabs guessing is highly dangerous.
To appear to be going nuclear without really doing so is to
invite trouble. It might spark Nasser into a foolish preemptive
move."

Komer, who served for years with the CIA before joining
Bundy's National Security Council staff, had few illusions at
the time about what was going on underground at Dimona. He
vividly recalled discussing the Israeli nuclear bomb project
with John McCone, his boss: "We knew the program was con-
tinuing. They never told us they would stop."

His recommendations to the President, as he had to know,
had no chance of being accepted by the Israelis, nor could they
even serve as a negotiating device. Raising a "to-do" to put
Israel "firmly on notice" was not going to stop the bomb.

A declassified summary of the June i Johnson-Eshkol conversa-
tion shows that Johnson indeed did follow his staff's advice to
the letter, as if he, too, believed that Washington could negoti-

THE SAMSON OPTION 135

ate Israel out of its nuclear arsenal. Johnson was emphatic in
telling Eshkol that international inspection of Dimona would
calm the Arabs and slow the Middle East missile race. "The
President pointed out that the Arabs will inevitably tie Israeli
missiles to Israel's nuclear potential," the official memorandum
of conversation said. "This is why we see IAEA control as in
Israel's interest. We should like to remind the Prime Minister
that we are violently against nuclear proliferation."

The President also reminded Eshkol that the Soviet Union
was becoming more of a factor in the Middle East, and an
Israeli reassurance on Dimona could go a long way toward
keeping the Russians out. Komer summarized the issue for the
President on the day after the Eshkol meeting: "Peres said yes-
terday Israel wasn't worried so much about present UAR mis-
siles but about better stuff Soviets might give Nasser. This is
our whole point too — if Nasser thinks Israel is getting better
missiles than he has, and is not reassured on Dimona, he'll be
forced to pay Soviet price to get missiles. Therefore, you urge
Eshkol to agree both to Dimona reassurances, and to IAEA
controls. These two acts would help diminish Nasser's incen-
tive to get exotic weapons help from the USSR. Eshkol's argu-
ment, 'Why reassure an enemy?' is short-sighted."

Komer added, "All in all, we understand why Israel, being
under the gun, is more fearful of its future than Washington.
But Israel can count on us. All we ask in return is that Israel
recognize our Arab interests and our common aim of keeping
the Soviets out of the Middle East."

Israel, of course, was willing to play along in any way to get
more American arms. But it would never "count" on America
to protect its future. Komer's comment referred to the main
message of the June i summit meeting, one that echoed the
assurances that John Kennedy had privately given Golda Meir
two years earlier: the United States would become Israel's sup-
plier of arms as long as Israel did not produce nuclear weapons.
It was this proposal, not found in any of the declassified docu-
ments in the Johnson Library, that drove the June i summit
meeting. The White House's offer soon became known to
David Ben-Gurion and Ernst David Bergmann, who viewed
any such commitment by the Eshkol government, according to

136 THE SAMSON OPTION

a former Israeli official, u as compromising the security of
Israel."

Johnson's pleas about IAEA inspection and the sharing of in-
formation with the Arabs went nowhere, but his promise of
continued arms support became a factor in what emerged by
the fall of 1964 as a major strategic issue for the State of Israel:
when to begin the mass production of a nuclear arsenal. Eshkol
obviously was far from a pacifist; he had, for example, no am-
bivalence about continuing Israel's ongoing chemical and bio-
logical weapons programs. "Maybe he looks now to you as a
moderate, but he was — like all our leaders then — a pragmatic
son of a bitch," a former aide recalled with pride. "This was a
man who grew up in a generation that saw the Holocaust, the
Communists in Russia, the Arabs — all wanting to destroy
Jews."

Eshkol's only doubts about Dimona were practical ones:
Dimona was costing upward of $500 million a year, more than
10 percent of the Israeli military budget. It was money not be-
ing spent elsewhere, the former aide added: "Eshkol would say,
'I don't have the money for it. How many children will go
without shoes? How many students will not go to university?
And there's no threat. None of our neighbors are going nu-
clear. Why should we go nuclear?' "

Eshkol's questions led to a series of high-level and highly
secret conferences on the bomb in late 1964 and early 1965 at the
Midrasha, a Mossad retreat outside Tel Aviv. The meetings
were attended by senior officials of the leading Israeli political
parties, as well as many defense experts. "The issue was not
whether to go nuclear or not," one participant recalled. "But
when."

Dimona's supporters had convinced most of the leadership that
only nuclear weapons could provide the absolute and final de-
terrent to the Arab threat, and only nuclear weapons could
convince the Arabs — who were bolstered by rapidly growing
Soviet economic and military aid — that they must renounce all
plans for military conquest of Israel and agree to a peace settle-
ment. With a nuclear arsenal there would be no more Masadas

THE SAMSON OPTION 137

in Israel's history, a reference to the decision of more than nine
hundred Jewish defenders — known as the Zealots — to commit
suicide in a.d. 73 rather than endure defeat at the hands of the
Romans.

In its place, argued the nuclear advocates, would be the Sam-
son Option. Samson, according to the Bible, had been captured
by the Philistines after a bloody fight and put on display, with
his eyes torn out, for public entertainment in Dagon's Temple
in Gaza. He asked God to give him back his strength for the
last time and cried out, "Let my soul die with the Philistines."
With that, he pushed apart the temple pillars, bringing down
the roof and killing himself and his enemies. For Israel's nu-
clear advocates, the Samson Option became another way of
saying "Never again."*

The basic argument against the nuclear arsenal went beyond
its impact on the readiness of the military: these were years of
huge economic growth and business expansion inside Israel,
and Dimona still was absorbing far too much skilled man-
power, in the view of many industrial managers — whose con-
stant complaints to government officials on that issue went
nowhere. Dimona continued to distort the economy and limit
development. There was, for example, no private computer in-
dustry in Israel by the late 1960s, although American intelli-
gence officials had rated Israel for years as an international
leader — with Japan and the United States — in the ability to
design and program computer software.

The long-range social and military costs of Dimona were
most certainly the concerns of Yitzhak Rabin, the new army

* In a 1976 essay in Commentary, Norman Podhoretz accurately summarized the pro-
nuclear argument in describing what Israel would do if abandoned by the United
States and overrun by Arabs: "The Israelis would fight . . . with conventional weap-
ons for as long as they could, and if the tide were turning decisively against them, and
if help in the form of resupply from the United States or any other guarantors were
not forthcoming, it is safe to predict that they would fight with nuclear weapons in the
end. ... It used to be said that the Israelis had a Masada complex . . . but if the
Israelis are to be understood in terms of a Complex' involving suicide rather than
surrender and rooted in a relevant precedent of Jewish history, the example of Samson,
whose suicide brought about the destruction of his enemies, would be more appropri-
ate than Masada, where in committing suicide the Zealots killed only themselves and
took no Romans with them." Podhoretz, asked years later about his essay, said that his
conclusions about the Samson Option were just that — his conclusions, and not based
on any specific information from Israelis or anyone else about Israel's nuclear capabil-
ity.

138 THE SAMSON OPTION

chief of staff, and Yigal Allon, a close Eshkol adviser and for-
mer commander of the irregular Palmach forces before the 1948
War of Independence. Less compelling to the military men was
the moral argument against the bomb raised by some on the
left and in academia: that the Jewish people, victims of the
Holocaust, had an obligation to prevent the degeneration of
the Arab-Israeli dispute into a war of mass destruction. Those
who held that view did not underestimate the danger of a con-
ventional arms race, but believed that, as Simha Flapan, their
passionate spokesman, wrote, "the qualitative advantages of
Israel — social cohesion and organization, education and techni-
cal skills, intelligence and moral incentive — can be brought
into play only in a conventional war fought by men."

A major complication in the debate, seemingly, was the Arab
and Israeli press, which routinely published exaggerated ac-
counts of each side's weapons of mass destruction. In Israel,
there were alarmist accounts of Soviet and Chinese support for
an Egyptian nuclear bomb. Egypt, in turn, publicly suggested
that it had received a Soviet commitment to come to its aid in
case of an Israeli nuclear attack, and President Gamal Nasser
warned in an interview that "preventive war" was the "only
answer" to a nuclear-armed Israel. It was a period, Simha
Flapan later wrote, when both Israel and Egypt "were trapped
in a vicious circle of tension and suspicion and were doing
everything possible to make them a self-fulfilling prophecy."

The officials at the top in Israel understood the difference
between public perceptions and private realities. Before the
Midrasha conference, for example, Binyamin Blumberg pre-
pared an analysis estimating that the Arab world would not be
able to develop sophisticated nuclear weapons for twenty-five
years — until 1990. The paper was important to Eshkol, who, as
he told the conference, was considering three postures: a ready-
to-go bomb in the basement; the nuclear option, with the
weapons parts manufactured but not assembled; and further
research. "He said," an Israeli recalled, " 'We're not in a
hurry. It'll take the Arabs twenty-five years.'" Eshkol's choice
was to merely continue research and use that added time to
"jump a stage" — to bypass the crude plutonium weapon deto-
nated by the United States at Nagasaki and go directly to

THE SAMSON OPTION 139

more efficient warhead designs. There was a second compelling
argument, along with the issue of money, for temporarily lim-
iting the work at Dimona to research: Israel as yet had no
long-range aircraft or missiles in place that were capable of
accurately delivering a bomb to targets inside the Soviet
Union, which was always Israel's primary nuclear target; no
Arab nation would dare wage war against Israel, so the Israeli
leadership thought, without Soviet backing.

Levi Eshkol parlayed the Midrasha decision into a strategic
asset: he told Washington that he would defer a decision on the
nuclear arsenal in return for a commitment to supply offensive
arms that would match the quality of arms being supplied to
Egypt by the Soviet Union. It was more than good enough for
Johnson, who was losing interest with each passing year in
waging political war with Israel over the bomb. The President
rewarded Eshkol's pledge of a delay by authorizing the sale to
Israel in 1966 of forty-eight advanced A-4E Skyhawk tactical
fighters, capable of carrying a payload of eight thousand
pounds. Johnson's refusal to ask more of the Israelis on the
nuclear issue was eased by the strong evidence of renewed So-
viet economic and military commitments in the Middle East:
Moscow was moving to encourage Arab socialism and unity.
For Johnson, this meant that the Cold War was moving to the
Arab world, with Israel serving as a surrogate for America.

Eshkol's decision to put a hold on the nuclear issue enraged
Ben-Gurion, still smarting over the Mapai Party's handling of
the Lavon Affair; Ben-Gurion eventually would publicly com-
pare Eshkol to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minis-
ter who attempted to appease Adolf Hitler before World War
II. In June 1965, Ben-Gurion, talking darkly of Eshkol's "endan-
gering the nation's security," dramatically resigned from the
Mapai Party and created a new party, known as Rafi (an acro-
nym for the Israel Workers' List). He was joined by a reluctant
but loyal Peres, who became Rafi's power broker, and the rest-
less Dayan, who had recently resigned as agricultural minister.
Ben-Gurion's hope was that Rafi could capture as many as
twenty-five seats in the 120-member Knesset and emerge as a
major power broker in Israeli politics.

140 THE SAMSON OPTION

Ben-Gurion and his followers changed forever the political
structure of Israel. Rafi would now become an opposition
party, and play the role that had traditionally belonged to
right-wing groups. Ben-Gurion's immediate reason for split-
ting with the Mapai leadership was his continued anger over
Lavon, but the Rafi Party, under Peres's leadership, stood for a
more aggressive position across the spectrum of defense issues,
and especially on nuclear weapons. Ernst Bergmann was an-
other founding member of Rafi, and once again had Ben-Gu-
rion's ear: "Ben-Gurion was quoting Bergmann all the time,"
recalled an Israeli, about the dangers of not initiating the pro-
duction of a nuclear arsenal. The issue emerged as a dominant
one in the 1965 elections, although it was played out in code
language. Israeli newspapers were full of criticism from Peres
and Ben-Gurion over what was referred to in Hebrew as ha y a-
noseh ha'adin, "the sensitive topic," or b'chia ledorot, "a lament
for generations"; the Rafi leaders also constantly criticized
what they euphemistically called EshkoPs "big mistake," lan-
guage understood by many inside Israel as referring to Eshkol's
hesitations about opening a nuclear weapons assembly line at
Dimona. None of this was reported by American or other
newspapers: the foreign correspondents in Israel apparently
did not understand what really was at stake.* Neither did the
American intelligence community.

It was an ugly election, with insults and accusations from all
parties. One prominent lawyer with close ties to Golda Meir
referred publicly to Ben-Gurion as a "coward" and Rafi as a
"neo-Fascist group." Many Israelis understood, in a way that
no outsider could, that the debate was not only about defense
policy or the bomb, but about Ben-Gurion's profound belief
that Israel could survive only by relying on the state — and not
on the traditional volunteerism of the Zionist movement. In
Ben-Gurion's view, the kibbutzim, the Mapai Party, the

* John Finney of the New York Times did a little better with the Floyd Culler inspec-
tions. Finney, who remained on the nuclear beat for the Times, reported on June 28,
1966, that the American team had arrived at "the same tentative conclusion as a year
ago, that the reactor is not being used at this time for producing plutonium for weap-
ons." The reporter wisely cautioned, however, that the team's conclusion "was tenta-
tive because it is difficult to establish in once-a-year inspections that none of the reactor
fuel rods have been removed for extracting the plutonium. . . ."

THE SAMSON OPTION 141

Hagannah of the 1948 war — all populated by volunteers who
believed in the cause — had to give way to the more impersonal
institutions of universal military service, universal public edu-
cation, and promotion on the basis of competence and merit
rather than party affiliation. Many aspects of this debate co-
alesced — at least for his critics — in Ben-Gurion's unwavering
support of the nuclear arsenal. Some of his opponents in the
1965 election viewed Dimona as nothing more than a collection
of competent scientists and bureaucrats, with unclear ideologi-
cal affiliations, who had created a powerful weapon away from
public scrutiny and approval. For many, the election was per-
haps a last-ditch struggle between an Israel that continued to uti-
lize the willing spirit of dedicated volunteers and an Israel that
relied on the use of science, objective knowledge, and the state.

Ben-Gurion and his Rafi Party were sorely disappointed by
the election, winning only ten seats in the Knesset, not enough
to provide Ben-Gurion with a power base. The election
amounted to a brutal referendum on his dream of returning to
power, and the end of his role in the public policy of Israel.*

The election also was interpreted by Levi Eshkol as a refer-
endum on his handling of the nuclear issue; Dimona would
remain a standby operation. The country seemingly had re-
jected the efficient "can do" approach of Ben-Gurion, Dayan,
and Peres in favor of the social-democratic and volunteerist
goals of the Meir-Eshkol wing of Mapai. It was a low point for
Ben-Gurion and his followers.

By the spring of 1966, Ernst David Bergmann had had
enough: he resigned under pressure as director of the commis-
sionerless Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, as well as from
his two high-level defense science posts. Many in the Eshkol
cabinet viewed his departure as long overdue, and it showed;
Bergmann was angered and hurt when a ministry of defense
official came to his apartment within an hour of his resignation

* Ben-Gurion was an inveterate diarist and spent many hours in his later years — he
died in early 1974 — assembling his papers and helping his biographer, Michael Bar-
Zohar. Myer Feldman recalls being accompanied on one of his last scheduled meetings
with Ben-Gurion by Teddy Kollek, the mayor of Jerusalem and longtime associate of
the Old Man. The two men stood waiting as Ben-Gurion scribbled away in his note-
book. "I said to Kollek, 'What's he doing?' " Feldman recalled. Kollek replied, with a
smile, "Oh, he's falsifying history."

142 THE SAMSON OPTION

to retrieve his government car. Eshkol moved quickly to make
the Bergmann portfolio less independent: bureaucratic respon-
sibility for the AEC was shifted from the defense ministry to
the prime minister's personal staff, and Eshkol himself became
chairman of an expanded and revitalized commission. Deci-
sions about the future of nuclear weapons in Israel would now
be made by the highest political authority. A pouting Berg-
mann retreated, with the aid of Lewis Strauss, to the Institute
of Advanced Studies at Princeton University, but not before
granting an interview to Maariv, the popular Israeli newspa-
per. The New York Times account of that interview provides a
classic example of the public doubletalk and doublethink that
then surrounded the nuclear issue in Israel and the American
press: "The scientist [Bergmann] suggested that the Eshkol
Government was less sympathetic to long-term scientific plan-
ning than former Premier David Ben-Gurion, with whom Pro-
fessor Bergmann was closely associated. He spoke of the lack of
funds for research and the risk of dependence on foreign
sources."

Nonetheless, the nuclear weapons issue, even if depicted as
"long-term scientific planning," had moved into the open in-
side Israel. In the United States, where all foreign policy was
rapidly becoming consumed by the Vietnam War, Israel's nu-
clear option continued to be an issue solely for government
insiders, who weren't talking.

11

Playing the Game

The ambivalence and hypocrisy at the top of the
American government about a nuclear-armed Israel inevitably
was mirrored by the bureaucracy. By the middle 1960s, the
game was fixed: President Johnson and his advisers would pre-
tend that the American inspections amounted to proof that
Israel was not building the bomb, leaving unblemished Ameri-
ca's newly reaffirmed support for nuclear nonproliferation.

The men and women analyzing intelligence data and writing
reports for their higher-ups understood, as Arthur Lundahl
and Dino Brugioni had learned earlier, that there was little to
be gained by relaying information that those at the top did not
want to know. Nonetheless, the information was there.

There was much known, for example, about the Israeli
Jericho missiles, rapidly being assembled by Dassault. "We had
a direct line to God," a middle-level CIA technical analyst re-
called. "We had everything — not only from the French but also
from the Israelis. We stole some and we had spies. I was able to
draw a scale model of the system. I even designed three war-
heads for it — nuclear, chemical, and HE [high explosive] — as a
game. We were predicting what they could do." What Israel
could do, the former CIA official said, was successfully target
and fire a nuclear warhead. The problem arose in conveying
the intelligence. "I was never able to get anything officially
published" by the CIA for distribution throughout the govern-
ment, he said. "Everybody knew" about the Israeli missile, he
added, "but nobody would talk about it." The official said he
decided to bootleg a copy of the intelligence report — risking his
job by doing so — to senior officials in the Pentagon and State
Department. "I remember briefing a DIA [Defense Intelli-

144 THE SAMSON OPTION

gence Agency] admiral. He wasn't ready to believe it. I got him
turned around, but he retired and no one else cared."

Even James Jesus Angleton, the CIA's director of counter-
intelligence, who also was responsible for liaison with Israel,
had his problems when it came to the Israeli bomb. The moody
Angleton was legendary — and feared — for his insistence on se-
crecy and his paranoia about Soviet penetration of the Agency.
He was a master of backchannel and "eyes only" reports, and
his increasing inability to deal with the real world eventually
led to his firing in late 1974, but his glaring faults in counter-
intelligence apparently did not spill over to Israel* Former
Agency officials, who, in prior interviews with me, had been
unsparing in their criticism of Angleton's bizarre methods in
counterintelligence, acknowledged that he had performed cor-
rectly and proficiently in his handling of Israel. Angleton had
worked closely with members of the Jewish resistance in Italy
while serving with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) at the
end of World War II; it was a dramatic period when thousands
of Jewish refugees and concentration camp survivors were be-
ing illicitly funneled from Europe into Palestine, then under
British control.

One of Angleton's closest colleagues was Meir (Meme)
Deshalit, a resistance leader and Israeli intelligence official who
had been posted to Washington in 1948. Deshalit was the older
brother of Amos Deshalit, the physicist who had done much to
develop Israel's nuclear arsenal before dying of cancer in 1969.
Angleton shared Meir Deshalit's view of the Soviet and Arab

* The first prominent public mention of Angleton's role in counterintelligence
came in a major front-page expose by the author in the New York Times of December 22,
1974. The story linked Angleton and his office to Operation chaos, the massive and
illegal spying by the CIA on antiwar dissidents in America. Angleton, in a telephone
conversation with me before the story was published, suggested that he could provide
better stories, dealing with Communist penetration of the antiwar movement and CIA
operatives in the Soviet Union, if the domestic spying story was not published. On the
day of its publication, a Sunday, as I later wrote in the Times, Angleton telephoned me
very early at home and complained that Cecily, his wife of thirty-one years, had
learned only by reading my story that her husband was not a postal employee, as
Angleton claimed he had told her. He added: "And now she's left me." The call shook
me up; the upset in his voice seemed real. I mumbled something about a newsman's
responsibility to the truth, hung up, and telephoned an old friend who had served in
the CIA with Angleton. He laughingly told me that Cecily of course had known from
the beginning what her husband did for a living, and had left him three years earlier to
move to Arizona, only to return.

PLAYING THE GAME 145

threat to Israel; his personal contacts and strong feelings made
him the logical choice to handle liaison between the CIA and
the Israeli government. His was one of the most important
assignments in the 1950s and early 1960s, the height of the Cold
War, because of the continuing flow of Soviet and Eastern Eu-
ropean refugees into Israel. Angleton and his Israeli counter-
parts ran the "rat lines," as the Jewish refugee link became
known. It was the Jewish refugee operations, as many in the
CIA understood, that provided the West in the early postwar
years with its most important insights into the Soviet bloc.
Some of the programs were financed off the shelf by CIA con-
tingency funds, as part of kk mountain.

Angleton's love for Israel and his shared views on the Arab
and Soviet question, however, did not keep him from investi-
gating, as a counterintelligence officer, any Israeli or American
Jew he suspected of trafficking in classified information. One of
the big question marks was nuclear technology. The CIA knew
from its analysis of the fallout of the ongoing French nuclear
tests in the Sahara that the increasingly modernized and minia-
turized French warheads were based on United States design.
A former American nuclear intelligence official recalled that he
and his colleagues "were driven crazy" by the suspicion that
Israel's quid pro quo for the French help at Dimona included
access to design information purloined from the government's
nuclear laboratories at Los Alamos and Livermore, California.

No evidence of such a link was found, but intelligence com-
munity investigators were surprised to discover at the end of
the chaos inquiry a cache of Angleton's personal files, secured
with black tape, that revealed what obviously had been a long-
running — and highly questionable — study of American Jews in
the government. The files showed that Angleton had con-
structed what amounted to a matrix of the position and Jewish-
ness of senior officials in the CIA and elsewhere who had access
to classified information of use to Israel. Someone in a sensitive
position who was very active in Jewish affairs in his personal
life, or perhaps had family members who were Zionists, scored
high on what amounted to a Jewishness index.

One government investigator, talking about the Angleton
files in a 1991 interview, recalled his surprise at discovering that

146 THE SAMSON OPTION

even going to synagogue was a basis for suspicion. "I remem-
bered the First Amendment," the investigator added sardoni-
cally. "You know, Freedom of Religion." The Angleton matrix
suggested that at some point a suspect who measured high
enough on the Jewishness scale was subjected to a full-bore
field investigation. "Was there simply a background check, or
was there physical or electronic surveillance?" the investigator
asked rhetorically. "I don't know. I was angry but at the same
time thought it wasn't irrational because a lot of Jews were
giving help to Israel." In the end, the Angleton files were not
investigated further or even brought to the attention of the
House or Senate intelligence committees: "We decided not to
do anything with it."

Samuel Halpern, a Jew who served for years as executive
assistant to the director of the CIA's clandestine services, was
under constant investigation by Angleton. Halpern's position,
the highest reached by any Jew in the clandestine service, gave
him access to the name and background of every foreigner who
had ever been recruited by the CIA. His father, Hanoch, was a
Pole who had become active in Zionism before World War II
and, after emigrating to Palestine, had worked closely with
Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharett, among others, after the State
of Israel was formed in 1948. "Jim looked at me real hard,"
Halpern recalled with a laugh, "but I told him, 'I'm not going
to muck up your desk.' The Israelis never approached me. Why
should they when I'm sitting on the third floor [of the CIA] and
Jim's on the second?"

Angleton did more than just collect information on Ameri-
can Jews. He also was a sponsor, through the chaos program,
of a highly secret CIA operation involving the Agency's pur-
chase of a Washington trash collection company. The firm,
known in the CIA as a proprietary, had contracts to pick up
garbage at various Third World embassies, including the Israeli
embassy. Another of its stops was the downtown Washington
offices of B'nai B'rith, the powerful Jewish social and volunteer
organization with worldwide activities. The trash would be
systematically sorted and analyzed for any possible intelli-
gence.

PLAYING THE GAME 147

Angleton's close personal ties with the Deshalit family and oth-
ers in Israel made it inevitable that he would learn about the
construction in the Negev. One senior official recalled that An-
gleton's first intelligence report on Israel's plans to build the
bomb was filed routinely in the late 1950s, and not by backchan-
nel, and thus could be made available to those who needed to
know inside the CIA's Directorate of Operations, the unit re-
sponsible for clandestine action. "I have no idea who his
sources were," the senior official said. "He probably never told
the director." Over the next few years Angleton continued to
produce intelligence on Dimona, also based on information
supplied by his personal contacts, but never learned — or, at
least, never reported — the extent to which Israel was deceiving
Washington about its nuclear weapons progress.

Angleton, of course, had been given periodic briefings in the
late 1950s and early 1960s by Lundahl or Brugioni on the intelli-
gence collected by the U-2 overflights of the Negev, but never
evinced much interest. His forte was human intelligence, or
humint, as the intelligence community calls it, and not techni-
cal intelligence, such as the U-2 imagery. u He was a real funny
guy," Brugioni recalled. "I'd meet with him, brief him; he'd ask
a few questions, you'd leave — and never know what he's hold-
ing. Sometimes he'd have his office real dark and have a light
only on you. He was a real spook."

For all of his mystique and freedom to operate, Angleton,
too, was stymied by the Israeli bomb. His reports on Dimona,
buttressed by the U-2 data, did not even result in an official
CIA estimate that Israel was going nuclear. Such formal esti-
mates, which are distributed to the President and other key
government officials, were the responsibility of analysts in the
CIA's Office of National Estimates (ONE). "Ji m kept saying,
'Yes, they've got it,' and the analysts would say, 'I don't believe
it,' " one former intelligence official recalled. The analysts sim-
ply did not think Angleton's humint sources were reliable, the
official said, adding that tension and second-guessing over hu-
man intelligence sources were a way of life in the CIA. By 1965,
an extensive dossier of humint reports on Dimona had built up,
the official said, and the nuclear issue was again raised with the

148 THE SAMSON OPTION

ONE analysts: "They told me that even if Israel did have the
bomb, they'd never use it."

The intelligence official, recalling the issue in an interview,
got angry again at the analysts: "They were so stupid. You'd
have to put the bomb under their noses before they'd believe it.
They didn't have any understanding of Israel; didn't know
what made them think. They were so stupid."

It is not known how many CIA analyses on the Israeli bomb
were produced in the early 1960s by the Office of National Esti-
mates, but the one memorandum that does exist was astonish-
ingly inept about Israeli attitudes. The paper, entitled
"Consequences of Israeli Acquisition of Nuclear Capability,"
was dated March 6, 1963, and was made available nearly twenty
years later at the John F. Kennedy Library without any dele-
tions. The national estimate concluded that Israel, once having
attained a nuclear capability, "would use all the means at its
command to persuade the U.S. to acquiesce in, and even to
support, its possession. . . . Israel could be expected to use the
argument that this possession entitled it to participate in all
international negotiations respecting nuclear questions and dis-
armament." The staggering flaw in the CIA analysis was its
basic assumption: that Israel would make public or otherwise
let its nuclear capability become officially known. The reality
was precisely the opposite: Israel had no intention of going
public with the bomb in fear of American and worldwide Jew-
ish disapproval that would result in international reprobation
and diminished financial support from the Diaspora.

Such flawed intelligence analyses went a long way toward
keeping the men at the top officially ignorant of what no one
wanted to know. In public, the Johnson administration, as
were its predecessors, was firmly opposed to the spread of nu-
clear weapons anywhere in the world; official acknowledgment
of an Israeli bomb would have presented Washington with an
unwanted dilemma — either sanction Israel or be accused of a
nuclear double standard.

Israel was not considered a nuclear weapons state on Octo-
ber 18, 1964, when China exploded its long-awaited first nuclear
bomb. President Johnson, three weeks away from his over-

PLAYING THE GAME 149

whelming election triumph over Senator Barry Goldwater of
Arizona, the Republican presidential candidate, reaffirmed his
commitment to nonproliferation in a nationally televised
speech: "Until this week, only four powers [the United States,
the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France] had entered the
dangerous world of nuclear explosions. Whatever their differ-
ences, all four are sober and serious states, with long experi-
ence as major powers in the modern world. Communist China
has no such experience. . . . [Its] expensive and demanding
effort tempts other states to equal folly," the President said.
"Nuclear spread is dangerous to all mankind. . . . [W]e must
continue to work against it, and we will."*

The President may have believed his impassioned words, but
not all of his senior advisers did. Six weeks later, McGeorge
Bundy, Robert McNamara, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk
discussed what they considered the administration's real policy
options at a secret meeting on nonproliferation. Among those
taking careful notes was Glenn T. Seaborg, chairman of the
Atomic Energy Commission, who recounted the session in his
little-noted 1987 memoir, Stemming the Tide:

"Rusk said he thought a basic question was whether we re-
ally should have a nonproliferation policy prescribing that no
countries beyond the present five might acquire nuclear weap-
ons. Were we clear that this should be a major objective of U.S.
policy? For example, might we not want to be in a position
where India or Japan would be able to respond with nuclear
weapons to a Chinese threat? Rusk mentioned the possibility of
having an Asian group of nuclear weapons countries, pointing
out that the real issue was among Asian countries and not be-
tween northern countries and the Asians.

"McNamara thought it would take decades for India or Ja-
pan to have any appreciable deterrent. Nevertheless, he

# Johnson also reassured the nation that his administration had not been surprised
by the Chinese test. The President perhaps did not know it at the time of his talk, but
the American intelligence community was aghast to learn from air sampling that the
Chinese bomb had been fueled by enriched uranium, and not, as predicted by the CIA,
by far-easier-to-produce plutonium. The American guess had been that China would
chemically reprocess plutonium from the spent uranium rods in a reactor, as at
Dimona. Confronted with evidence to the contrary, some in the CIA believed that
China might have stolen or otherwise misappropriated the enriched uranium for its
bomb.

150 THE SAMSON OPTION

thought the question Rusk had raised should be studied. He
pointed out that adoption of a nonproliferation policy by the
United States might require us to guarantee the security of
nations that renounced nuclear weapons.

"I [Seaborg] expressed doubt that a policy condoning further
proliferation should be considered, saying that, once a process
of making exceptions was started, we would lose control and
that this would inevitably lead to serious trouble. . . .

"Bundy warned about the need to keep very quiet the fact
that we were discussing the basic questions of whether U.S.
policy should be nonproliferation, because everyone assumed
that this was our policy. Any intimation to the contrary would
be very disturbing throughout the world. McNamara added
that we had to the stop the leaks that come out of meetings like
this. He agreed with Bundy that the fact that the U.S. commit-
ment to nonproliferation was being questioned simply must
not be allowed to leak."*

One senior American who resisted the persuasive talk about
expanding the nuclear club was John McCone, the increasingly
frustrated CIA director. McCone sorely felt the loss of John
Kennedy; his relationship with Lyndon Johnson was much less
intimate and his advice not always welcome. McCone's solu-
tion to the Chinese bomb (and to the problems with North
Vietnam) was to send in the Air Force. "McCone just raised
hell" about the Chinese bomb, recalled Walt Elder. "He wanted
permission to fly U-2S over the test site and was turned down."
The CIA director wasn't daunted: he next floated "the idea of
what if we got in and took out the Chinese capability?" Daniel
Ellsberg recalled similar talk at high levels in the Pentagon:
"We were saying, in essence, that if we could have stopped the

* Rusk carried his fight to other bureaucratic forums, with the focus on a nuclear
India. Daniel Ellsberg recalled being told by his Pentagon superiors after the Chinese
test in 1964 that Rusk's position was that "India needed a nuclear weapon as a deterrent
and there was no reason for them not to have it." Rusk's basic approach, Ellsberg
added, was "Why shouldn't our friends have nuclear weapons now that our enemies
have them?" It should be noted that there was no mention of this extraordinary debate
in McGeorge Bundy's seemingly comprehensive history of the atom bomb, Danger and
Survival, published in 1988. India's drive for the bomb, wrote Bundy, "remains a doubt-
ful prize in that something about this apocalyptically destructive standard of greatness
is not truly Indian." Bundy could have added that there were a few Americans in high
Washington positions in 1964 who had no doubt then that India's desire for the bomb
was quite truly Indian.

PLAYING THE GAME 151

Russian bomb, we would have saved the world a lot of trouble.
It's too bad the Soviets got the bomb." One thought was to use
unmarked bombers to strike at the Chinese, thus avoiding iden-
tification. Cooler heads prevailed, Ellsberg recalled: "The mis-
sion just looked too big to be plausibly denied."

McCone resigned as CIA director in 1965, despite his support
for Johnson's continuing escalations in Vietnam. He explained
to a colleague: "When I cannot get the President to read my
reports, then it's time to go." McCone knew that Floyd Culler's
inspections were accomplishing little; he also understood what
Israel's continuing refusal to permit full-fledged international
inspections meant. But, said Elder, the CIA director found that
Johnson "didn't understand the implications" of the inspection
issue and didn't want to hear about it. By the end of McCone's
tenure, Elder added, he believed Lyndon Johnson as President
had three basic concerns: "His standing in polls. 'Can I sell it to
Congress?' And 'How can I get out of Vietnam?' "

There was yet another concern: Johnson's understanding that
good nonproliferation policies made for bad politics. The Presi-
dent needed no one to remind him that any serious move to
squeeze the Israelis on their nuclear weapons program would
lead to a firestorm of protest from American Jews, many of
whose leaders had consistently supported his presidency and
the Vietnam War. He got another reminder of the political
danger of nonproliferation from a special panel on that subject
he convened a few weeks after the Chinese test. The distin-
guished panel, headed by Roswell L. Gilpatric, who had served
John Kennedy as deputy secretary of defense, returned on Jan-
uary 21, 1965 — the day after Johnson's inauguration — with a re-
port that amounted to an indictment of past and present
policy.* It warned that the world was "fast approaching a point
of no return" in opportunities for controlling the spread of
nuclear weapons and urged the President, "as a matter of great
urgency, [to] substantially increase the scope and intensity of
our effort if we are to have any hope of success." The report

* Panel members included the retired Allen Dulles, the former secretary of state
Dean Acheson, the former defense secretary Robert A. Lovett, the former White
House science adviser George B. Kistiakowsky, and IBM chairman Arthur K. Watson.

152 THE SAMSON OPTION

also advocated the establishment of nuclear-free zones in Latin
America, Africa, and the Middle East, including Israel and
Egypt. Most significantly, it suggested that the President
should reconsider — in terms of nonproliferation — a controver-
sial American plan to create a multilateral force (MLF) that
would give NATO members, including the West Germans, a
joint finger on the nuclear trigger. The raising of any question
about the MLF issue was especially sensitive, for the Soviet
Union was insisting that any proposed nonproliferation treaty
prohibit a separate European nuclear force, which it viewed as
nothing more than a vehicle for providing the West Germans
with the bomb.

At a White House meeting with the President, individual
members of the panel listed a sweeping series of priorities —
including encouraging France to turn its force de frappe into a
NATO nuclear missile battery — that prompted the President
to note caustically, according to Glenn Seaborg, that imple-
mentation of the committee's report would be u a very pleasant
undertaking." Johnson and his aides at the meeting, who in-
cluded McGeorge Bundy and Dean Rusk, warned Gilpatric
and the committee members not to discuss the report with any
outsiders or even to acknowledge that a written document had
been presented to the White House (the Gilpatric report re-
mains highly classified today). Seaborg, who attended the meet-
ing, noted in his memoir that Rusk, when asked by the
President for his views, depicted the report as being "as explo-
sive as a nuclear weapon." Its premature release, Rusk added,
"could start the ball rolling in an undesirable manner" — in
terms of the MLF and future negotiations on a nonprolifera-
tion treaty. The report went nowhere, despite the President's
promise of further consultations with Gilpatric.

Political disaster, from the White House's point of view,
struck in June, when newly elected Senator Robert Kennedy
based his maiden Senate floor speech on many of the until then
unknown and ignored recommendations of Gilpatric's panel.
Kennedy, often invoking his dead brother, urged the President
to rise above the immediate issues and begin dealing with nu-
clear proliferation: "Upon the success of this effort depends the
only future our children will have. The need to halt the spread

PLAYING THE GAME 153

of nuclear weapons must be a central priority of American
policy." Kennedy specifically called for Johnson to immedi-
ately open worldwide negotiations for a comprehensive test
ban treaty; such talks, he proposed, should include Communist
China, one of North Vietnam's allies, and he indirectly criti-
cized Johnson for his preoccupation with Vietnam by stating:
"We cannot allow the demands of day-to-day policy to obstruct
our efforts to solve the problems of nuclear spread. We cannot
wait for peace in the Southeast — which will not come until
nuclear weapons spread beyond recall."* Johnson, of course,
was made apoplectic by what he was convinced was Gilpatric's
leaking of the report to Kennedy and responded by deleting
material on nonproliferation from a speech he was scheduled to
deliver the day after the Kennedy speech. Over the next
months, Glenn Seaborg recalled, there was nothing more heard
about the Gilpatric report from the White House, and non-
proliferation continued to be treated as a topic fit only for the
arms controllers in the Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency (ACDA), whose advice — no matter how prudent —
rarely carried weight with the White House. President John-
son held out for two years before agreeing in secret talks with
the Soviets to drop the MLF, clearing the way for the 1968
Nonproliferation Treaty and giving the government's arms
controllers an important victory.

In the mid-1960s, the Soviet Union had begun to step up its
military and economic aid programs in the Middle East, and
Israel was increasingly seen by the Johnson White House as a
regional American bulwark. It was inevitable that high-level
interest in the perennial and profitless issue of international
inspection for Dimona began to wane in 1967 — as the A-4E
Skyhawks began arriving in Israel, as the routine Floyd Culler
inspections proceeded, and as America got more and more en-
meshed in the Southeast Asian war.

* Kennedy also warned that Israel and India "already possess weapons-grade fission-
able material, and could fabricate an atomic device within a few months." Further
Israeli progress on the bomb, he added, "would certainly impel the Egyptians to inten-
sify their present efforts." The senator's remarks caused a sensation in Israel, but were
little noted elsewhere. The New York Timers page-one account of the Kennedy speech
included no mention of Israel.

154 THE SAMSON OPTION

There were strong public clues, nonetheless, that Israel
never stopped planning to build its bombs. In mid-1966, the
Israeli government delayed in accepting nearly $60 million in
possible American aid for the construction of a much-needed
nuclear desalinization and power plant because the aid was
contingent on an Israeli commitment to permit IAEA inspec-
tion of Dimona. Johnson and Eshkol had announced a prelimi-
nary agreement to build the plant in 1964, amid much fanfare,
and subsequent studies showed the facility could produce two
hundred megawatts of power and 100 million gallons of de-
salted water daily. Continued American insistence on IAEA
inspections made the Israelis walk away, without any explicit
explanation, from the project. The proposed desalinization
plant was studied for the next decade, but the American condi-
tions were never accepted, and the plant was never built. The
pro-nuclear advocates in the Rafi Party, including Peres and
Bergmann, urged Israel to refuse American aid for the plant
and publicly accused the United States of attempting to violate
Israeli sovereignty by linking its support to Dimona's IAEA
inspection.

Privately, Peres and Bergmann — still influential, although
out of office — suspected that the United States had a hidden
agenda in its support of the nuclear desalinization plant: to
divert Israeli funds, manpower, and resources from Israel's nu-
clear arsenal, in the hope that Israel would at some point be
forced to make a choice between nuclear weapons and nuclear
energy.

A second clue came in July 1966, during a debate in the Knes-
set on the most recent inspection of Dimona by Floyd Culler,
whose conclusion — that there was still no evidence of a bomb
facility — had again been made available by American officials
to John Finney of the New York Times and, so some Israelis
thought, also to Egypt. During the debate, Shimon Peres told
of his recent participation at an international conference on
nuclear weapons where, he said, the Middle East was discussed:
"I found that there is unfortunately no possibility of limiting
the spread of nuclear weapons in the near future — not because
of Israel, but because big powers are not agreeing among them-
selves. ... I was glad to discover that most experts on the

PLAYING THE GAME 155

subject do not believe it possible to envisage nuclear disarma-
ment for the Middle East in isolation from the conventional
arms race. . . ."* Peres was, in essence, defending Israel's deci-
sion not to give in to Washington's IAEA inspection demands
on the ground that the Arabs had conventional superiority.
The same argument — Warsaw Pact tank and troop superiority
— had been used a few years earlier by the United States and its
allies to justify the deployment of nuclear missiles in Europe.
By the late 1960s, much of the United States' primary analy-
sis of nuclear intelligence had been shifted from the CIA to the
design and engineering laboratories for nuclear weapons at Los
Alamos and Sandia and, later, Livermore, where intelligence
units dealing with the Soviet Union and China had been set up
after World War II. The growing danger of proliferation be-
came starkly clear during the Kennedy administration, when a
group of scientists awaiting clearance before beginning work at
Los Alamos successfully designed a nuclear bomb from the
open literature. The laboratories' primary targets continued to
be the reactors and research centers in the Soviet Union and
China, but the intelligence units eventually began monitoring
the transfer of nuclear technology and those countries that
were viewed as "nth" nations, as near-nuclear countries came
to be known. "We had tremendous data" that went beyond
satellite photography and intercepted communications, a
closely involved official said. "We had people who had worked
inside plants in the USSR and China. We were even able to do
mock-ups of their weapons system — go from the warhead back
through the plant. As part of the drill, I was required to sum-
marize who's got the bomb and who was next, in near-term
capability." Israel was always at the top of his list, the official
recalled, followed by South Africa. "We were watching the re-
lationship between France and Israel and between Israel and
South Africa," he added. "Those were the links."

* Peres misstated the conference's findings. His Knesset statement was initially re-
ported in Israel and Nuclear Weapons, by Fuad Jabber, published in 1971 by the Interna-
tional Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London. Jabber wrote that the
conference, known as the International Assembly on Nuclear Weapons and sponsored
in part by the IISS, had, in fact, issued a call for "a serious effort" to negotiate a
nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. The assembly took place June 23-26, 1966, in
Toronto, Canada.

156 THE SAMSON OPTION

His assignment also included monitoring the flow of ura-
nium ore into Israel from supplier nations such as Argentina
and South Africa. Such ore, known as yellowcake, served as the
raw fuel for the heavy-water reactor at Dimona; by the mid-
1960s, its sale was a highly competitive and profitable business
whose transfer in lots under ten tons was not monitored by the
IAEA in Vienna. The first known shipment of ore from South
Africa to Israel had arrived in 1963 and, since it totaled ten tons,
was duly reported. In subsequent years, however, clandestine
shipments of South African yellowcake began to arrive at
Dimona, often escorted by a special operations unit of the Is-
raeli Defense Force. Israel's goal was to prevent outsiders from
learning that the reactor was operating at two to three times
greater capacity than publicly acknowledged, utilizing that
much more uranium ore — and therefore capable of reproces-
sing greater amounts of plutonium. At least some of those later
clandestine shipments from South Africa became known in the
late 1960s to the intelligence officers in Los Alamos and Sandia,
who were carefully watching — by satellites and other means —
most of the major uranium mines in the world. But after Is-
rael's overwhelming victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, the intel-
ligence about Dimona and its nuclear potential became highly
compartmentalized, as the White House decided to side more
openly with Israel in the Middle East, and thus much harder to
access. "We knew about the yellowcake," the official recalled,
"but we weren't allowed to keep a file on it. It simply wasn't
part of the record. Anytime we began to follow it, somebody in
the system would say, 'That's not relevant.' "

The U-2 was still flying, but Lundahl and Brugioni had gone
on to new assignments in photo interpretation and were no
longer directly involved in Israeli nuclear matters. Far more
intelligence was being collected by America's corona and gam-
bit satellite systems, which, after much trial and error, had by
the mid-1960s begun consistently to produce high-resolution
photography from their orbital perches in outer space. Any
interesting intelligence on Israel was now being routed to
Livermore and Los Alamos through the CIA's Office of Science
and Technology, headed by Carl E. Duckett, to which Lundahl's
National Photo Interpretation Center was now reporting.

PLAYING THE GAME 157

Duckett, a college dropout, had been recruited to the Agency
in 1963 from the Army's Missile Command headquarters at the
Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. As a civilian Army expert on
Soviet missile systems, he had been regularly consulted in prior
years by Lundahl and Brugioni on U-2 photo intelligence, but
had been told nothing about the findings on Dimona. That
process reversed once Duckett joined the CIA, where he got his
own special access to the Israeli intelligence. In the beginning,
Brugioni recalled, there were long meetings in the late after-
noon, usually over a few drinks, at which Duckett and his col-
leagues would openly discuss the day's findings. Eventually
those faded away. Duckett was a quick study, Brugioni said:
"By the mid-1960s, it was all his baby." Lundahl and Brugioni
soon came to understand that Duckett was no longer sharing
all of his information about the Israeli bomb — the U-2's spy
flights were no longer as important, and there was no longer
any need for them to know. It was the end of an era.

The screening out of Lundahl and Brugioni was perhaps
more of a loss than Duckett and his colleagues in the Office of
Science and Technology could understand: those two were the
institutional memory of the U-2 intelligence on Dimona — al-
most none of which had been reduced to writing prior to i960.
"Duckett knew very little about what went on before," Bru-
gioni said. "He never asked me and I never told him. Lundahl
always said, 'This is very, very sensitive.' " In subsequent
years, even the most senior officials of the American govern-
ment would learn little about the pre-1960 U-2 flights over
Dimona; the lack of written history meant that there was noth-
ing in the files. It was the first of many disconnects that would
come to dominate the processing of U.S. intelligence on
Dimona.

12

The Ambassador

Walworth Barbour, the American ambassador to
Israel, was a compelling presence to the Israelis — a tall, shy,
hugely overweight diplomat with a gluttonous appetite and
acute emphysema. He constantly sprayed his throat with a va-
porizer, wore yellowing white suits with brown-and-white
shoes, and walked with a shambling gait, an outsized Sydney
Greenstreet. Barbour spoke no Hebrew and by the end of
his stay in Israel still had little to do with the people of the
country, rarely attending educational, cultural, or social
events. And yet he was beloved by Israel's leadership, and had
been since his appointment in 1961 by John F. Kennedy; he
remained on the job for the next twelve years. Only three
American ambassadors ever served longer in one post.* A life-
long bachelor, Barbour retired quietly in 1973, along with his
spinster sister, to the family home in Gloucester, Massachu-
setts, taking with him an extensive knowledge of Israel's nu-
clear capability.

Barbour's long assignment as ambassador was not a testa-
ment to his intelligence and competence, which were excep-
tional, but to his understanding of when and when not to
accept every Israeli assertion at face value and his willingness
to operate the American embassy as a subsidiary, if necessary,
of the Israeli foreign ministry. The ambassador often reminded
his questioning subordinates that he was not a servant of the
Department of State or its secretary, but a President's man

# The State Department's historical office lists George P. Marsh, minister to Italy
from 1861 to 1882; Edwin V. Morgan, ambassador to Brazil from 1912 to 1933; and Claude
G. Bowers, ambassador to Chile from 1939 to 1953.

160 THE SAMSON OPTION

with a personal mandate in an important embassy — a function-
ary who would stand aside when ordered to do so, and permit
the White House and the Israeli ambassador to Washington to
run the real policy behind his back.

A graduate of Exeter and Harvard, Barbour was unfailingly
courteous and correct to his subordinates, and in his first six
years as ambassador, when some of the most accurate reporting
on Dimona was forwarded to Washington, rarely interfered
with the job of those working in his embassy. But the field
reports had no impact; they simply disappeared into the bu-
reaucratic maze. Barbour did nothing to keep them alive, and
after the 1967 Six-Day War ordered his staff — over the objection
of one key aide — to stop reporting on nuclear weapons in
Israel. Barbour's assignment at that moment was to insulate
Lyndon Johnson and his men from those facts that would com-
pel action, and he did his President's bidding. He was the best,
and the worst, of American diplomacy.

Barbour's important role in the history of U.S.-Israeli rela-
tions — and his knowledge of Israel's nuclear capability — was
hidden by his insistence on a low profile. He was a virtual
nonperson to the American correspondents assigned to Israel;
he rarely met with them, unlike most ambassadors, and he
never spoke on the record. His name occurs only six times in
the New York Times Index for the years 1961 to 1966, a period of
political turmoil in which the United States, after intense dip-
lomatic activity, emerged as Israel's chief arms supplier. His
reclusiveness was legendary in his embassy, a five-story build-
ing located near the beach at Tel Aviv. Barbour's daily pattern
was inviolate, and interrupted only by international crises or
the visits of the traveling secretary of state and senior White
House advisers: he was chaufFered to the embassy's basement
garage around nine in the morning, rode an elevator to his top-
floor office, stayed there until noon, rode the elevator down to
the garage, and returned home. There were afternoon rounds
of golf, weather permitting, dips in his pool, and an occasional
evening of bridge. When Barbour did entertain — he did so less
frequently over the years — his guests often included prominent
visiting Jews, such as Abe Feinberg and Victor Rothschild of

THE AMBASSADOR 161

London.* Such events, Barbour once explained to William N.
Dale, who arrived in 1964 as deputy chief of mission, were his
way of fulfilling a direct assignment from Lyndon Johnson:
"I'm here under orders from Johnson, who told me, 'I don't
care a thing about what happens to Israel, but your job is to
keep the Jews off my back.' Everything I do is designed to keep
Jews off the President's back," Barbour added. "To keep them
happy." He told another newcomer to the embassy, upon being
asked why he did not respond to messages from the State De-
partment, "I go back to Washington every year to see the Presi-
dent and I get my orders directly from him — not from those
pipsqueaks [at State]." Barbour also was phobic about using a
newly installed State Department telephone scrambler system,
designed to protect conversations from being intercepted. "If
they can talk to you over a secure telephone line," he told an
aide, "then you have to do what they want." He repeatedly
urged Bill Dale to send embassy reports by mail, especially if
the intelligence was adverse to Israeli interests, because "Israel
has friends all over the State Department" and would intercept
the information.

Most junior members of the embassy staff had no contact
with the ambassador and could go for months or longer with-
out even seeing him; Barbour's weekly staff meetings were only
for senior subordinates. One personal aide recalled being asked
by Barbour in 1967, six years after he became ambassador,
whether it was possible to cash a check in the embassy. "He
had never been on the second floor," the aide added, where the
cashier's office was located. Still, many subordinates viewed
him with awe. "He was the finest man I've ever known in the
government," said John L. Hadden, who served as CIA station
chief in Tel Aviv in the mid-1960s. "He was a real professional.
He was Boston Back Bay and friendship was not in the books
with him. Respect is a better word. He didn't bother with

* His sister, Ellen, served as embassy hostess during her extended annual visits to
Israel. Barbour kept photographs of Ellen and one other woman on his desk; a personal
aide recalled Barbour explaining, when queried, that the other woman was someone
he'd known in Cairo, where he was serving as political officer during World War II.
"What happened to her?" "I asked her to marry me and she said no," Barbour replied.
The young aide was astonished: "She said no and he kept her picture there twenty
years later."

162 THE SAMSON OPTION

friends." Barbour's closest associates were not his fellow Amer-
icans, but senior officials of the Israeli government, including
Golda Meir, who became prime minister in 1969, and Major
General Aharon Yariv, director of military intelligence from
1964 to 1972.

Of course, no senior Israeli official would talk to an outsider
about nuclear weapons, and Barbour, in the end, shared that
taboo.

Yet it was Barbour's men who reported before the June 1967
war that Israel had completed its basic weapons design and was
capable of manufacturing warheads for deployment on mis-
siles. Israel also may have had a crudely manufactured bomb or
two ready to go, but — as the embassy could not know — no deci-
sion had been made by Prime Minister Eshkol to begin mass
production.

Spying on Dimona was not the responsibility of the Central
Intelligence Agency, as in most foreign countries, but left to
the U.S. Army, Air Force, and Navy attaches assigned to the
embassy; the Agency's espionage functions included the moni-
toring of Soviet activities and the providing of special cameras,
film, and free bottles of wine to any officer who wanted to
picnic on the weekend with his family in the Negev. The 1963
restrictions on the CIA's operations inside Israel, American of-
ficials acknowledged, were a sop aimed at avoiding any undue
embarrassment for the Israeli government, whose extensive
penetration of the United States government needed to be
curbed. "We were helpful to the Israelis" in terms of supplying
essential intelligence, explains a senior American diplomat,
"but we knew that if we weren't — they'd get it anyway." The
few espionage attempts organized by the CIA before 1963 had
gone nowhere, in part because of the nature of Israel's close-
knit society but also because of Israel's ability to monitor the
activities of the Americans assigned to Israel. All of the U.S.
embassy contacts with Israeli citizens and government officials
were — and continue to be — funneled through a special liaison
office of the Israeli foreign ministry. It was understood that
American intelligence and military officials who tried to evade
the liaison system would be carefully watched. Given the diffi-

THE AMBASSADOR 163

culty of operating clandestinely inside Israel, the function of
the CIA station chief was reduced to writing political assess-
ments and staying in close touch with his counterparts in Mos-
sad and in military intelligence, Aman. Israel, with its steady
stream of Soviet and Eastern European Jewish refugees, re-
mained the most important country for collecting intelligence
on the Soviet Union, but those operations were left to James
Angleton and his men in Washington. It was sometimes hard
for a newcomer, like John McCone, to keep things straight.

McCone was still eager to have his agency prove what he knew
to be true: that a chemical reprocessing plant did exist under-
ground at Dimona. Peter C. Jessup, the CIA station chief in the
early 1960s, recalled being peremptorily ordered to fly to Rome
early in McCone's tenure, where the director — then on a grand
tour of CIA facilities in Europe — was scheduled to see the
pope. The trip, in the days before jet travel, had taken many
hours, but McCone had only a moment to spare. u He was in a
great hurry," Jessup recalled, "and told me that President Ken-
nedy thinks the most serious problem facing us is the prolifera-
tion of nuclear weapons." McCone wanted the questions about
Israel put to rest, and urged the station chief to put "his staff"
to work. At the time, the bemused Jessup added, his "staff" at
the CIA station consisted of two aides.

Despite the difficulties, the men in the U.S. embassy — want-
ing, like most people, to do their job as well as possible — kept
on trying to find out what they could about Dimona. Getting
close was fun and a little dangerous — one American officer was
chastised by Barbour after being caught by the Israelis with a
butterfly net outside Dimona's barbed-wire fence — but occa-
sionally added something useful to the intelligence. Colonel
Carmelo V. Alba was the U.S. Army's military attache to Israel
in the mid-1960s and, like the other attaches from Western em-
bassies, spent many weekends cruising in the Negev with his
long-range telescopic camera. "All I was doing was taking pic-
tures," Alba recalled. He did so at least once a month, shipping
the film off to Washington, with no reaction — until one of his
photographs showed "evidence of activity at Dimona. Smoke

164 THE SAMSON OPTION

was coming out of the dome," Alba added. "Finally, the CIA
got excited."

Dimona had gone critical, and the embassy continued its
watch. John Hadden, who began his tour as CIA station chief
in 1963, sent Alba one weekend to Beersheba to do a census of
French names on the mailboxes of the city's apartment com-
plexes.* A constant goal was to try to determine who was doing
what at Dimona. Barbour did not interfere with the hunt; Wil-
liam Dale, as the second-highest-ranking American diplomat,
was given wide latitude in the day-to-day management of the
embassy, and he encouraged his staff to find out what it could.
The embassy's scientific attache was a physicist named Robert
T. Webber, who shared Dale's interest in Dimona. Webber,
who had earned a doctorate in physics at Yale University,
worked closely with John Hadden — in clear violation of a State
Department decree forbidding scientific attaches to engage in
intelligence work.** Webber also relied on the intelligence gath-
ered by Mel Alba and encouraged the Army colonel to collabo-
rate with his British and Canadian counterparts in collecting
more.

It was a hunt, and the men in the embassy got a break some-
time in 1966 from an unlikely source — an American Jew living
in Israel. Dale and the rest of the embassy staff stayed on good
terms — as American diplomats do all over the world — with the
many American citizens who chose to live abroad. Americans
in Israel were routinely invited to embassy parties and picnics,

* Alba got Hadden in trouble with the Israeli foreign office by inadvertently putting
Hadden's American license plates on a jeep before taking one of his weekend jaunts to
the Negev. All diplomatic cars in Israel were required to have special license plates,
and the embassy mechanics routinely removed the American license plates from the
private cars of newly arrived diplomatic personnel and placed them on the walls for
decoration. Alba had asked the embassy car pool for a black jeep. It arrived with no
plates, and the colonel, in a hurry, ordered the mechanic to grab a set at random from
the walls and throw them on. The plates turned out to be Hadden's. The jeep, of
course, was monitored by the Israelis, leading to a stiff protest: why was the CIA
station chief sneaking around in the Negev?

** "We were very strict," recalled Herman Pollack, then the director of the State
Department Bureau of International Scientific and Technological Affairs. "No intelli-
gence work by science attaches. He was supposed to keep his hands very clean." Had-
den, who retired from the Agency a few years after returning from Israel,
acknowledged with a laugh that he "never paid any attention to organizational charts
and titles. Life seemed to be better run if people worked together to accomplish joint
goals that made sense."

THE AMBASSADOR 165

as well as to screenings of American movies. Dale and his wife
had become especially friendly with Dr. Max Ben, a Princeton-
trained pharmacologist who was helping the Israelis set up a
pharmacology institute under United Nations auspices. "One
morning," Dale recalled, "Max came into the embassy and said,
'I have a story to tell you. I've been down to Dimona and I was
shown the nuclear facilities. I'm convinced that Israel is mak-
ing nuclear warheads.' " Ben, contacted later, vividly recalled
his trip to Dimona. He had become a close friend and confidant
of Ernst Bergmann's while in Israel, and it was that friendship,
he claimed, that led to the invitation to take a firsthand look at
the reactor. Though he had studied physics at Princeton, Ben
found the visit to be "exciting" but confusing: "A lot of it I
didn't understand." What troubled him, however, was not any
concern about proliferation, but his belief that the United
States was not helping Israel in its serious pursuit of the bomb:
"I thought we ought to do something about it — to give them an
assist." He talked to Dale and then agreed to discuss what he
knew on a more sophisticated level with Bob Webber. Dale
arranged the meeting. Ben explained years later that his pur-
pose in taking up the issue with Dale and Webber had not been
to inform on Israel's nuclear progress, as Dale obviously as-
sumed, but to try to pass word of the accomplishments at
Dimona to Washington. "My goal," he recalled, "was to see
how the U.S. could help Israel. I tried to walk a line."

Dale felt he had enough to report. He brought Webber and
others into the embassy's most secure room — a lead-sealed facil-
ity known as the "bubble" — and the group drafted a highly
classified dispatch to Washington summarizing their intelli-
gence. Its essential message, Dale recalled, was: "Israel is get-
ting ready to start putting warheads into missiles so they can
be quickly assembled into weapons for delivery by plane." The
paper had to be approved by the ambassador, who was ap-
proached with trepidation. "Barbour harrumphed," Dale re-
called, "and said, 'Well, I suppose it's time. Go ahead, they
deserve it. Let it go.' " Dale forwarded it with a sense of accom-
plishment. It was, Dale thought, the embassy's most definitive
report by far on Dimona.

"So what happened?" asked Dale. "Not a damn thing. No-

166 THE SAMSON OPTION

body responded." Webber eventually was replaced as science
attache by someone much less interested in Dimona, and Colo-
nel Alba was reassigned as an aide to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Adding to the frustration, Dale said, was the fact that more
revealing information about Israeli intentions was provided
early the next year by another American Jew. The embassy
was entertaining a group of American government officials
who were en route from India after attending a regional meet-
ing of American economic and commercial attaches. There was
a party set up in Tel Aviv with Israeli trade officials. On the
next day, Eugene M. Braderman, then a deputy assistant secre-
tary of state for commercial affairs, approached Dale, "looking
ashen. He said, 'One of the Israelis at the party told me that my
primary duty, as an American Jew, was to help the United
States government accept Israeli nuclear weapons.' Braderman
was very agitated," Dale added. "He said to me: Tm an Ameri-
can first, not a Jew first.' He told me to do whatever was right
with the information."* By that point, Dale understood that
Braderman's story had nowhere to go. "I didn't do anything
with it," he said. "I knew it'd not do any good."

There were other issues, of course, for the embassy. Israel de-
cided in early June 1967 to preempt the increasing Arab
buildup in the Sinai and go to war. A year of steady tension
had culminated two weeks before in an Egyptian blockade of
the Israeli port city of Elat. An increasingly confident Nasser
had sent his troops to occupy Sharm el Sheikh on the southern
tip of the Sinai Peninsula, blocking the access of Israeli ship-
ping to the Strait of Tiran, which leads from the Red Sea to the
Gulf of Aqaba and then to Elat.

Israel considered the Egyptian move to be an act of war, but
— under pressure from the Johnson administration not to at-
tack — the Eshkol government wavered. The prime minister,
confronted by a public that wanted to initiate war with the
Arabs, was viciously criticized for his indecisiveness and lack
of military experience. To maintain political control — intelli-

* Braderman, now retired and living in Washington, recalled the 1967 visit to Israel
and said it was "possible that I'd said something like that" to Bill Dale. He added that
Dale's recollection certainly reflected his general view of the issue of Jewish loyalty.

THE AMBASSADOR 167

gence reports reached the White House of military coup plot-
ting — Eshkol was forced in late May to turn to his political
enemies, including Moshe Dayan and Menachem Begin, and
form a government of national unity. For Begin, now a minis-
ter without portfolio, the appointment meant that he was serv-
ing in the Israeli government for the first time in his political
career. Dayan's nomination as defense minister had to be much
more difficult for Eshkol; it amounted, in essence, to an ac-
knowledgment that he was unable to lead the nation in war-
time. Dayan, with his romantic image, was as admired among
the population as the hesitating Eshkol was not. Dayan came
to the defense portfolio with enormous political strength, rais-
ing the possibility that the hard-line pro-nuclear Rafi Party of
David Ben-Gurion would once again be dominant in Israeli
military affairs.

The army, led by Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin, was ready.
Israel struck first on June 5 and achieved its stunning victory in
six days, humiliating the Soviet-supplied Arabs and seizing
Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, Jordan's West Bank,
and Syria's Golan Heights, and, most stirring of all, fulfilling a
two-thousand-year-old dream by bringing the Old City of Jeru-
salem under Jewish control. But Israel suddenly found itself in
control of one million more Palestinians.

Wally Barbour spent much of the war in the Israeli war room,
and he shared the jubilation throughout the nation — and in
much of America — over the stunning Israeli victory. There
was no pretense of objectivity in his reporting to Washington;
his views and those of the Israeli leadership were identical. For
example, Barbour urged that Washington downplay the Israeli
Air Force's rocket and strafing attack on the USS Liberty, a
naval intelligence ship, on the third day of the war. The Liberty,
flying the American flag, had been monitoring Middle East
communications traffic in international waters off the coast of
Israel and had been identified as an American ship before the
attack, which resulted in a death toll of thirty-four with 171 men
wounded. The incident triggered resentment throughout the
United States government. Barbour, however, was anything
but angered. A declassified cable on file in the LBJ Library

168 THE SAMSON OPTION

shows that hours after the incident he reported that Israel did
not intend to admit to the incident and added: "Urge strongly
that we too avoid publicity. [Liberty's] proximity to scene could
feed Arab suspicions of U.S.-Israel collusion. . . . Israelis ob-
viously shocked by error and tender sincere apologies."*

At war's end, Bill Dale was summoned by Barbour and told
of a change in policy regarding the collection of intelligence
about Dimona. Dale was to inform the embassy's military at-
taches, Barbour said, that they were no longer to report on
Dimona and no longer to undercut the Israelis by conducting
operations with their British or Canadian counterparts. "Israel
is going to be our main ally," Barbour told Dale, "and we can't
dilute it by working with others." There was a second message,
Dale recalled: "Barbour said, 'Arab oil is not as important as
Israel is to us. Therefore, I'm going to side with Israel in all of
my reporting.' And maybe he was right," added Dale. "From
that time on, it was a different Wally Barbour."**

Dale objected to the policy change, "and our relationship
soured." Barbour subsequently attempted to amend a favorable
fitness report he had turned in on Dale's behalf; Dale remains
convinced that his disagreement over Dimona set back his ca-
reer (he was named ambassador to the Central African Repub-
lic in 1973 an d retired from the Foreign Service in 1975). Dale
did, however, file one more embassy intelligence report on
Dimona. In the fall of 1967, Henry A. Kissinger, then a Har-
vard University professor and a consultant on Vietnam to the
Johnson administration, showed up in Tel Aviv to teach for a
week at the Israeli Defense College. At the end of the course,

* The Johnson Library documents also show that Clark Clifford, a key presidential
adviser and later secretary of defense, complained about the government's initially
tepid response at a National Security Council meeting the next day: "My concern is
that we're not tough enough. Handle as if Arabs or USSR had done it." It was "incon-
ceivable," Clifford added, according to the NSC notes, that Israel destroyed the Liberty
by error, as it claimed.

** It was a different CIA, too. A former senior intelligence officer recalled that "a
big change took place" inside the Agency after the Six-Day War. "All of a sudden a lot
of people were saying the Israelis were wonderful," the former official added. "Israeli
intelligence became untouchable, and the professional suspicion you should have about
another intelligence service — even a friendly one — disappeared." This became espe-
cially true in the Nixon administration; Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger, his national
security adviser, became renowned inside the CIA for preferring Mossad's intelligence
assessments on the Middle East to those supplied by the Agency.

THE AMBASSADOR 169

Kissinger went to Dale's office in the embassy and announced
that he needed to send an urgent, top-secret message to the
White House. "He wrote it in longhand," Dale recalled, "and
gave it to me to send." It was a warning about Dimona, and
Dale vividly recalled its conclusion: "As a result of my course
here, I am convinced Israel is making nuclear warheads." Dale
also vividly recalled a Kissinger warning to him: " Til have
your ass if this gets out.' Those were my first words from Kis-
singer."

After leaving Israel, Dale gave a series of perfunctory end-of-
the-tour debriefings in Washington to W. Walt Rostow, John-
son's national security adviser, and other senior government
officials; not surprisingly, he said, "Nobody asked me about the
Israeli bomb." In his next post, with the State Department's
Policy Planning Council, he again tried to raise questions about
Dimona, with similar results. One of his early assignments on
the council, the State Department's in-house think tank, was to
do a paper on nonproliferation. He wanted to include a chapter
on Dimona, but was refused permission to discuss that issue
with members of Congress or members of the Atomic Energy
Commission. When he protested, said Dale, a senior State De-
partment official, declaring that the Israeli bomb "was the most
sensitive foreign policy issue in the United States," threatened
to discuss his conduct with the secretary of state. His final pa-
per, Dale said, did not mention Dimona.

With Barbour staying on and on, the Israeli bomb disappeared
after 1967 as a significant issue in the American embassy.
Dimona became a nonplace and the Israeli bomb a nonbomb.
Sometime that year the Israelis invited Arnold Kramish, an
American expert on nuclear fuel cycles, to visit the reactor. "I
made a mistake," recalled Kramish, who was then visiting
Israel as a fellow at London's International Institute of Strate-
gic Studies. "I paid a courtesy call on Barbour. He said I
couldn't go — it would imply U.S. recognition of Dimona."
Kramish had read about the American inspections in the New
York Times and raised the obvious argument: "I'm not even an
official visitor." The ambassador didn't budge, and Kramish
decided not to challenge his dubious theory: "I didn't go."

170 THE SAMSON OPTION

Joseph O. Zurhellen, Jr., Bill Dale's replacement as deputy
chief of mission, followed the ambassador's cue and was also
much less interested in the subject. "Barbour was not well
versed in anything technical — words such as 'reprocessing
plant,' et cetera," Zurhellen explained. u Of course, he knew
something screwy had gone on in Dimona. The French had
pulled wool over our eyes, and so had the Israelis." But,
Zurhellen added, the embassy's view was that much of the in-
ternational concern about Dimona had been deliberately fos-
tered by Israel. U A strong element of their policy is to convince
others they have the bomb. It's disinformation." Anyway, he
added, "the nuclear issue was not on our mind. We had a war of
attrition." Zurhellen was referring to the steadily escalating air
and artillery battles in the late 1960s and early 1970s between
Israel and Egypt, whose army and air force had been dramati-
cally reinforced by the Soviet Union after the Six-Day War.

After the inauguration of President Richard M. Nixon in
January 1969, Barbour was even less than uninterested in
Dimona — he exorcised the issue. A senior American intelli-
gence officer recalled summoning a group of staff aides to pro-
vide Barbour, then in Washington, with a special briefing on
the Israeli nuclear weapons program. "Barbour listened to it
all," said the intelligence official, "and then said, 'Gentlemen, I
don't believe a word of it.' " The official was astonished: he had
given the same briefing in Israel to Barbour without challenge
a few months before. He privately took Barbour aside. "Mr.
Ambassador," he recalled saying, "you know it's true." Bar-
bour replied: "If I acknowledge this, then I have to go to the
President. And if he admitted it, he'd have to do something
about it. The President didn't send me there to give him prob-
lems. He does not want to be told any bad news."

Barbour had many good reasons for not wanting to tell Presi-
dent Nixon bad news. His emphysema was getting worse. He
was increasingly phobic about death, Zurhellen said, and kept
an oxygen tent near his bed. The ambassador also continued
his easygoing work habits; Zurhellen recalled only two occa-
sions in their five years together when Barbour stayed at the
embassy after his usual noon departure time.

The overweight ambassador had a huge scare early in the

THE AMBASSADOR 171

Nixon presidency upon being informed that he had been se-
lected to serve in the Foreign Service's most prestigious ambas-
sadorial post — in Moscow. The appointment, as were all such
assignments, was contingent upon medical approval, but, said
Zurhellen, Barbour hadn't had a State Department physical in
years, and knew he'd never pass one. "We'd finessed it by hav-
ing a local Israeli physician write a note every two years say-
ing, 'You're capable of carrying out your mission.' I drafted the
answer, thanking State for its confidence, but saying that 'in
seven years here I have carved out a unique situation.' " Bar-
bour was allowed to stay on the job.

In 1970, Barbour made one of his rare public appearances,
sharing a podium with Prime Minister Golda Meir at the open-
ing of an American school in Tel Aviv. The ambassador con-
gratulated Meir for attending and said, "I wish I knew how to
influence the premier to do what I ask her to do." She replied:
"I will now reveal the secret to you — you must only ask me to
do what I want to do."

When it came to Dimona, Barbour did what Israel wanted —
without asking. His support for Israel was profound and heart-
felt; nonetheless, many of his former colleagues in the Foreign
Service were confounded and distressed when on April 3, 1974,
a year after retirement, he agreed to become a board member of
the American branch of Bank Leumi, the Israeli state bank.
There was nothing illegal in doing so, but many State Depart-
ment officials consider such appointments to pose an obvious
conflict of interest. Barbour, characteristically, couldn't have
cared less about what his peers thought, and he remained on
the board until his death.

13

An Israeli Decision

In early December 1967, Yigal Allon, the 1948 war hero
and advocate of West Bank resettlement, was given a private
look at Israel's nuclear future. It moved him to tears. He and a
group of aides had been invited to inspect the early work on
Israel's first nuclear missile field, under construction at an ob-
scure site known on the map as Hirbat Zachariah, in the foot-
hills of the Judean Mountains west of Jerusalem. The expertly
concealed shelters, not identified for years by the American in-
telligence community, were to be burrowed into the ground at
the end of an unmarked road lined with closed-circuit cameras.

The shelters represented the best of Israeli technology and
ingenuity. They were being built by Tahal, the government-
owned water planning corporation, which was then negotiat-
ing with the shah of Iran to build a forty-two-inch oil pipeline
to relay Iranian crude to the Israeli port cities of Elat and
Ashdod. The smooth barrels through which the missiles would
be launched had been imported into the country marked as
lengths of pipeline.* Israel was many years away from anything
amounting to a nuclear missile capability — the first field test of
the Jericho I had been held, with mixed results, only a few
months before. The missile, jointly being developed with
France's Dassault Company, had guidance problems: it wasn't
yet capable of going where it was aimed.

Nonetheless, those first shelters represented, as Allon clearly
understood, a new kind of military security for the nation. " Al-

* A Tahal representative was appointed in 1966 by Prime Minister Eshkol to the
expanded and revamped Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, to serve on the new
power and water subcommittee. Missile tubing also may have been shipped to Israel
described as water mains.

174 THE SAMSON OPTION

Ion got all excited," one Israeli observer recalled. "Here's a
man who had fought in 1948 with only a British submachine
gun, and now — twenty years later — here is Israel building nu-
clear missiles. We're a people," added the observer, "who have
come back from the dead. In one generation we have become
the warriors — the Sparta of our time."

Allon couldn't resist boasting about what he had seen. A few
days later, he stunned his cabinet colleagues by warning Egypt
in a public speech at Haifa that Israel would reply in kind to
any Egyptian attack on a population center using advanced
weapons. "Every weapon Egypt can produce or purchase with
the aid of a great power," he said, "we can match, sometimes
with and sometimes without the aid of a big power." As a
member of the prime minister's select committee on national
security issues, Allon had great credibility. But no Israeli offi-
cial had ever publicly acknowledged the existence of a nuclear
missile system, and Allon's cryptic assertions were privately
attacked by other government officials as a breach of security
and publicly criticized in the press for creating a panic.

Israel's missile program, code-named Project 700, had been en-
visioned years earlier by Ernst David Bergmann as the final,
costly step toward the Samson Option. One former Israeli gov-
ernment official recalled seeing figures indicating that the over-
all long-range price of Project 700, if fully authorized by the
prime minister's national security committee, would be $850
million — more than was budgeted for all Israeli defense expen-
ditures in 1967. The staggering price of the missiles was more
than matched by other elements of the nuclear system, and the
overall cost of the nuclear program continued to be the major
barrier to the bomb and the biggest hurdle for the official who
emerged in the late 1960s with responsibility for Israel's nuclear
future, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan.

Allon's visit to Zachariah had had a strategic purpose: he was
being proselytized by Dayan, who, with his black eye patch
and flair for the dramatic, had emerged from the Six-Day War
as an international hero. The war's aftermath also gave Dayan
and his pro-nuclear colleagues a renewed opportunity to pub-
licly condemn the major target of their prospective bombs — the

AN ISRAELI DECISION 175

Soviet Union. Dayan was among the first in the Eshkol cabinet
to predict that the Soviets, searching for any foothold they
could get in their ideological struggle with the United States,
would fill the power vacuum in the Middle East and become
the major threat to Israel. In early July, Dayan warned in an
interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper of West
Germany that if the Soviets chose to unite with the Arabs
against Israel, he would not "hesitate an instant to advise his
government to fight and defeat the Russians just like the Arabs.
. . . Israel need be intimidated by no one."

Dayan was articulating the sense of isolation that had
worked its way into the top levels of the Israeli leadership, in a
way not felt since the 1956 Suez Crisis. Charles de Gaulle had
responded to the war by accusing Israel of being the aggressor
and canceling all of France's arms sales to Israel, abrogating
twelve years of close French support for Israel. De Gaulle also
delayed the pending shipment of fifty previously purchased
Mirage III jet fighters. He even claimed to newsmen that he
had not known of Dassault's contract with Israel until the first
field test in 1967 of the Jericho I (although the French firm
would continue to work with Israelis on the missile program
for another year).

The Soviets and their satellites in the Eastern bloc, with the
exception of Romania, had gone further: all diplomatic rela-
tions with Israel were severed. The Soviets also immediately
began rearming their Arab clients. President Nikolai V. Pod-
gorny made a triumphant state visit to Cairo in late June and
was greeted by hundreds of thousands of cheering Egyptians.
Planeloads of Soviet arms began arriving shortly thereafter, in-
itiating an extensive and rapid buildup of the depleted Egyp-
tian war stores, all of which would be renewed within a year.
Moscow eventually sent Soviet advisers and high-performance
MiG fighters to Egypt; in return, the Russians were granted
preferential treatment at four Mediterranean harbors as well as
virtual control of seven Egyptian air bases. The Soviets were
similarly generous in their support for Syria and Iraq, the
other losers (along with Jordan) in the Six-Day War.

Israeli intelligence intercepted high-level communications
between Cairo, Damascus, and Moscow that were replete with

176 THE SAMSON OPTION

boastful talk about the next war in the Middle East, and little
discussion of the last one. The Soviet fleet was suddenly being
deployed in greater force in the Mediterranean, with two or
three ships — obviously attempting to intercept Israeli commu-
nications-parked off the Israeli coast. There was no response
to these provocations, as seen by the Israelis, from the world's
other great superpower, the United States.

In late August 1967, the Arab nations, buoyed by the Soviet
support and guided by Soviet advice, gathered for the first post-
war summit at Khartoum and agreed on what became known
as the "three no's" — no peace, no negotiations, and no recogni-
tion.

Dayan's drive for the bomb was heightened by his conviction
that Israel could not depend on America to deter a Soviet at-
tack. In 1966, he had spent time as a journalist in South Viet-
nam and come away "very much worried," as he later told
NSC adviser Walt Rostow, about "the steadiness of the United
States in honoring its commitments." In a crisis, Israel either
would or would not — as in Suez — be supported by Washington,
depending on the White House's assessment of its international
and regional interests. Dayan believed Moscow similarly
would be willing to come to the aid of the Arabs not because of
a deep concern for the Middle East, but to protect its prestige
and international interests. Whatever their motives, Dayan was
convinced that the superpowers would dictate events in the
Middle East unless Israel took steps to arm itself fully. Israel's
survival, in Dayan's view, was now dependent on its ability to
mass-produce nuclear weapons and target them at the Soviet
Union — just as the French goal was to target its force defrappe at
Moscow.

Dayan's mission in late 1967 and early 1968 was to convince
his fellow cabinet members that if the Soviets could be per-
suaded that the Israeli threat was credible, they might decide
that there was no Middle East war worth fighting. A credible
Israeli bomb also would deter the Soviets from taking any steps
in the Middle East that would jeopardize Israel's survival —
such as agreeing to supply an Arab nation with a nuclear
weapon. In Dayan's scenario, Israeli intelligence agents would

AN ISRAELI DECISION 177

secretly inform their Soviet counterparts as soon as Dimona's
assembly line went into full production. And when Israel de-
veloped its first bomb in a suitcase, Moscow also would be told
— and reminded that there was no way to stop Mossad from
smuggling a nuclear weapon across the border by automobile
or into a Soviet port by boat. As for the rest of the world,
including the United States, there would still be studied ambi-
guity on the question of whether Israel had the bomb. The
argument for an Israeli "bomb in the basement" was born.

Dayan got a boost in his lobbying sometime in the last few
months of 1967 when the Israelis learned from American intelli-
gence that the Soviet Union had added four major Israeli cities
— Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beersheba, and Ashdod — to its nuclear
targeting list. This most sensitive information was apparently
obtained unofficially, according to a former member of Prime
Minister Eshkol's staff: "We got it in a nonkosher way," the
Israeli explained, without amplification.*

A second boost was supplied by Henry Kissinger, then New
York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller's foreign policy adviser
in the campaign for the Republican nomination. Kissinger met
privately in February 1968 with a group of Israeli scholars at
the Jerusalem home of Major General Elad Peled, director of
Israel's Defense College, where Kissinger had taught the year
before. His message, according to Shlomo Aronson, an aca-
demic who has written on Israeli nuclear policy, was electrify-
ing: the United States would not "lift a finger for Israel" if the
Soviets chose directly to intervene by, "say, a Soviet missile
attack against the Israeli Air Force bases in Sinai." Aronson,
who attended the meeting, quoted Kissinger as making three
declarations: "The main aim of any American President is to
prevent World War III. Second, that no American President
would risk World War III because of territories occupied by
Israel. Three, the Russians know this."

By early 1968, it was obvious that the overwhelming victory

* American intelligence officials subsequently told me that the United States did not
obtain a physical copy of the Soviet nuclear targeting list until the early 1970s. Some
human intelligence about Soviet targets did exist, however, and it was that informa-
tion, known only to a few in the CIA and elsewhere, that conceivably could have been
passed along to the Israelis.

178 THE SAMSON OPTION

in the Six-Day War had solved none of Israel's basic political
and military problems in the Middle East. Yitzhak Rabin, the
army chief of staff, flew to Washington in mid-December 1967
and said as much in a meeting with General Earle G. Wheeler,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Rabin opened the con-
versation by stating that Israel finds itself in the peculiar posi-
tion of having won the war, but not the peace," Wheeler noted
in a memorandum for the record, later declassified and put on
file in the LBJ Library. "Israel was in a less favorable position
now than prior to 5 June [when the war began]. The Soviets do
not want a peaceful settlement," Rabin told Wheeler. u [T]heir
objective is to maintain a climate of tension, whereby they can
continue to foster an increasing Arab dependence on Soviet
power and influence . . . with a view toward maintaining So-
viet access to port and air terminal facilities and, ultimately,
control of Arab oil."

America's Jewish community responded to the dramatic June
victory with showers of money and increased visits; tourism
was booming in late 1967, and so was the Israeli economy. Is-
rael's success, as Ambassador Walworth Barbour told his
doubting staff in the American embassy in Tel Aviv, had ce-
mented its relationship to Washington. Yet for Dayan and
many of his supporters at Dimona and elsewhere, America had
proved its basic unreliability as an ally a month before the Six-
Day War when it failed to respond to Nasser's closing of the
Strait of Tiran and blockade of Elat. Israeli foreign ministry
documents showed that Dwight Eisenhower had promised in
writing after the Suez debacle in 1956 that the United States
would use force, if necessary, to keep the strait open. Israel
called on Johnson to keep that commitment after Nasser's
blockade and felt betrayed upon learning that the State Depart-
ment considered Eisenhower's commitment to have expired
when Eisenhower left office in early 1961. Only a treaty ratified
by the U.S. Senate was binding on subsequent administrations,
the Israelis were told. Washington, without knowing it, was
playing into the hands of Moshe Dayan and his nuclear ambi-
tions.

AN ISRAELI DECISION 179

But Israel was not yet a full nuclear power: no senior official
had authorized the reactor and reprocessing plant to begin sys-
tematically turning out plutonium. Financial fears continued
to haunt the leadership. One Israeli official recalled seeing esti-
mates indicating that by the early 1970s a full-scale nuclear
weapons program, including warheads and missiles, would be
chewing up more than 10 percent of Israel's overall budget —
nearly $1 billion. Pinhas Sapir, renowned among Israel's leader-
ship as the economic boss of the newly formed Labor Party,*
was a strong believer in government loans and investments to
promote economic development; dollars for Dimona never
made much sense to him. In his view, an Israeli bomb would
only lead to conflicts with the United States and a lessened flow
of American contributions.

Dayan, one Israeli official recalled, made a critical decision
early in 1968. He telephoned Sapir and asked him to spend a
day with him, just as he had done with Allon. The two men
went to Dimona. u He showed him the whole thing, from A to
Z," the Israeli said. "Nobody had seen the whole [reprocessing]
facility. Sapir was like a cat with sour cream. He came back and
said to Allon, who was still resisting a full nuclear commit-
ment: 'Have you seen it all? I've seen it and you don't know
shit.** There will be no more Auschwitzes.' "

Sometime early in 1968, Dimona finally was ordered into full-
scale production and began turning out four or five warheads a
year — there were more than twenty-five bombs in the arsenal
by the Yom Kippur War in September 1973. There is no evi-
dence that the Israeli cabinet ever made a formal decision about
Dimona. Nonetheless, production of the first assembly line
bomb, whether officially sanctioned or not, was quickly known
to the top layer of national security officials and widely ap-
plauded. An Israeli recalled that champagne was broken out at

* In 1965, Mapai and Achdut Avodah had agreed to join forces to run as a bloc for
seats in the Knesset. After the Six-Day War, the two parties merged with Rafi to create
the Labor Party. The next year, Mapam decided to join forces with the unified Labor
Party and stand for election on the same ticket, but did not formally join the party.

** It should be noted that there is no such expression in Hebrew as "You don't
know shit." The Israeli who used that phrase in an interview was fluent in idiomatic
English and, in his translation, was trying to describe the essence and import of Sapir's
comment to Allon.

180 THE SAMSON OPTION

Dimona, and in some government offices in Tel Aviv and Jeru-
salem, at word that the first bomb had been assembled. It was
widely believed, the Israeli added, that the first warhead had
the following phrase welded, in Hebrew and English, onto its
exterior: never again.

One former Israeli government official explained the bureau-
cratic procedure behind the decision to open Dimona's assem-
bly line by saying, with a shrug and a smile, that Moshe Dayan
had unilaterally decided that he had received the support of the
key money men and had all the authority he needed — as de-
fense minister — to turn Israel into a nuclear power. A similar
suggestion was made at the time to Dr. Max Ben, Ernst
Bergmann's American friend, by Amos Deshalit. "We were
talking about Dayan," recalled Ben, "and Amos said, 'He's the
guy who's acting on his own.' "*

With the decision finally taken, the bureaucracy closed
ranks, as Israelis always do in matters of state security. The
first necessity was the acquisition of uranium ore — lots of it.
Mossad knew that there were hundreds of tons of ore sitting in
a warehouse near Antwerp, Belgium, available for purchase in
Europe, but that option theoretically did not exist: such sales
in Europe were controlled by Euratom, the Common Market
nuclear agency, and it was inconceivable that approval would
be forthcoming for a large sale to Israel. Dimona was, after all,
under no international supervision. Even if such a sale could be
arranged, no one in Israel was willing to let the world know
that Dimona, ostensibly a twenty-four-megawatt reactor capa-
ble of consuming no more than twenty-four tons of ore in a
year, was purchasing an eight-year supply of uranium. Mos-
sad's solution was to approach one of its agents in West Ger-

* In April 1976, Time magazine reported that shortly after the Six-Day War, Dayan
"had secretly ordered the start of construction" on a reprocessing plant. Prime Minis-
ter Eshkol then decided, said the magazine, that "they could only rubber-stamp a
project already under way." The article, despite its confusion about the reprocessing
plant, which was already finished by 1967, provided the world with its first hard infor-
mation about the Israeli weapons program. The story carried no byline, apparently
because it was reported by David Halevy, who, as an Israeli citizen, was subject to
government censorship. Halevy, a former intelligence and army officer, was known for
good contacts inside the Israeli government and intelligence community; it was widely
believed inside the Israeli government, which officially denied the story, that his basic
source was Moshe Dayan.

AN ISRAELI DECISION 181

many in March 1968 and ask him to make the purchase of the
uranium — for $4 million — allegedly on behalf of an Italian
chemical company in Milan. The sale was approved by
Euratom in October, and the uranium was shipped out of Ant-
werp aboard a vessel renamed the Scheersberg A. The Scheersberg
A had been purchased, with Mossad funds, by another Israeli
agent-in-place in Turkey. Once at sea, according to published
accounts that were confirmed by Israeli officials, the uranium
ore was transferred to an Israeli freighter guarded by gunboats
and taken to Israel. The disappearance of the huge shipment of
uranium ore was known, of course, within months to Euratom;
it wasn't much longer before U.S. and European intelligence
agencies were reporting internally that the Israelis were in-
volved. It took nine years, nonetheless, before word of the ura-
nium hijacking reached the press, and the affair eventually
became the subject of a 1978 book, The Plumbat Affair. Israel's
response to the book and to the earlier newspaper accounts was
to continue to deny that it had a nuclear capability. No one,
except for a few public-interest advocates and a few reporters,
seemed to care.

14

A Presidential Gift

After the Six-Day War, and despite Israeli complaints
about the increased Soviet threat in the Middle East, the John-
son administration turned out once again to be a fitful ally in
Israel's eyes, as the President — anxious to avoid a break with
the Arab world — joined de Gaulle and embargoed all arms de-
liveries to Israel for 135 days. America did so, bitter Israelis
noted, while the Soviets continued to resupply their allies.
Johnson also publicly eschewed any firm commitment to de-
fend Israel in a crisis. He was asked by CBS newsman Dan
Rather at an end-of-the-year press conference whether the
United States had "the same kind of unwavering commitment
to defend Israel against invasion as we have in South Viet-
nam." His answer satisfied few Israelis: "We have made clear
our very definite interest in Israel, and our desire to preserve
peace in that area of the world by many means. But we do not
have a mutual security treaty with them, as we do in Southeast
Asia."

Nonetheless, Prime Minister Eshkol was eager to make a sec-
ond state visit to Washington in January 1968 to plead for the
sale of F-4 jet fighters to balance the Soviet introduction of
MiGs into Egypt. The F-4 was the most advanced fighter in the
American arsenal, and the Pentagon and State Department ar-
gued that Israel did not need such aircraft to maintain a mili-
tary advantage against the Egyptians, whose MiG-2is had a
much more limited range and bombing capacity. Introducing
the top-of-the-line F-4S into the Middle East would be an un-
warranted and unnecessary escalation; Israel would remain su-
perior with the previously supplied A-4 Skyhawk bombers.

But Johnson, or some of his senior staff, apparently still

184 THE SAMSON OPTION

hadn't given up on persuading Israel to accept the Nonprolifer-
ation Treaty (NPT) and were willing to trade fifty F-4S for it.
In a pre-summit memorandum for Johnson on January 5, 1968,
Walt Rostow discussed two lists— "What We Want" and "What
We'll Give." The want list included the Rostow reminder "We
think we have an acceptable NPT. We believe this will serve
Israel's long-range security. We expect Israel to sign." The give
list included twenty-seven more Skyhawks and a promise to
"cut lead time if Israel needs Phantoms."

Rostow's suggestion that it would be possible to link the
Phantom sale to the NPT was farcical, given Israel's commit-
ment to Dimona and the ample U.S. intelligence — much of it
supplied by Wally Barbour's embassy in Tel Aviv — about that
commitment. Many years later, in an interview, Rostow ac-
knowledged that he had had few doubts about Israel's nuclear
goals: "If you were to ask me what I thought in the sixties, I
thought they were moving to put themselves in a position to
have a bomb. Everybody and his brother knew what Israel was
doing."

There was a similar lack of realism in the White House's
approach to the broader Middle East picture, as summarized in
Rostow's January 5 memorandum: "[W]e can't support an
Israel that sits tight. . . . The Arabs need hope of Israeli con-
cessions — on refugees, Jerusalem, letting new refugees return
to the West Bank, avoiding permanent moves in occupied
lands." The issues would stay the same for at least the next
twenty-three years.

Rostow had to know that the Israeli military had gone on a
virtual rampage at the end of the Six-Day War in the newly
occupied areas of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Golan Heights,
ransacking and destroying Arab homes in an obvious attempt
to drive Palestinians and other Arabs off their land and into
Jordan and Syria. More than one hundred Arab homes were
demolished in the Old City of Jersualem on the first night after
the war by Israeli troops, operating under floodlights with bull-
dozers. Teddy Kollek, Jerusalem's mayor, explained in a 1978
memoir why such speed was necessary: "My overpowering
feeling was: do it now; it may be impossible to do it later, and it
must be done." Bulldozers and dynamite were used with espe-

A PRESIDENTIAL GIFT 185

cial ferocity throughout the West Bank; the village of Qalqiliya,
west of Nablus, had 850 of its 2,000 homes destroyed during
three days of Israel occupation. Moshe Dayan later accused the
Israeli soldiers of taking "punitive" action in the village and
ordered cement and other goods to be provided to the villagers
for rebuilding.

There was a brief period after the war in which many senior
Israelis, among them Dayan and David Ben-Gurion, openly
questioned the wisdom of holding on to the occupied lands.*
They saw the war as offering Israel a chance to trade land for
lasting peace; Jews, Ben-Gurion often said to his followers,
made lousy rulers. "Sinai? . . . Gaza? The West Bank? Let
them all go," Ben-Gurion told an American reporter. "Peace is
more important than real estate. We do not need territories."
Levi Eshkol expressed his own doubts to the visiting Abe Fein-
berg a few weeks after the war, saying in Yiddish, "What am I
going to do with a million Arabs? They fuck like rabbits."

Competing against those practical concerns were the reli-
gious and philosophical views of many Revisionist Zionists
who believed, along with Menachem Begin and his mentor, the
late Vladimir Jabotinsky, that Israel's expansion into the West
Bank was not an issue of politics, but a historical necessity; the
West Bank was the birthplace of the Jewish people, and the
area, part of Eretz Israel, had not been occupied during the war

* James Critchfield, a longtime CIA official who was chief of the Near East Division
in 1967, recalled that Dayan and Zvi Zamir, then head of Mossad, joined forces with
him and James Angleton at the end of the Six-Day War in a brief and ill-fated attempt
to stop the abuse in the West Bank and elsewhere. The goal, said Critchfield, was to
reach a quick accord on trading land for peace before the Israelis began settling the
occupied territories. Dayan and Zamir were convinced that such a step would be "a
disastrous development," said Critchfield. "We had to reverse it immediately, or it'd be
a fait accompli. " The goal was to start negotiations with Jordan's King Hussein, who
had entered the war reluctantly and late, and was eager to negotiate an end to Israeli
attacks on his country and his palace. "We started talking and we were making pro-
gress," said Critchfield. "I'd kept Mac Bundy [who had returned briefly to the White
House as Johnson's special national security assistant for the Middle East] informed
and he'd approved it. Twelve days after the end of the war, I thought we ought to
remind Mac that we were doing it." A White House meeting was arranged with Bundy
and Nicholas D. Katzenbach, then the under secretary of state. "We were told to knock
it off," Critchfield said. "They thought it was not well prepared. Angleton argued that
if we do not act now with Dayan's and Zamir's support, there will be settlements in the
West Bank. As we walked out, Mac said to me, Td forgotten how passionable Angleton
could be. We were at Yale together.' " Katzenbach subsequently said he had no recollec-
tion of the meeting. Critchfield, who retired from the Agency in 1974, wasn't surprised
at the loss of memory: "They made a dumb act, and wanted to forget it."

186 THE SAMSON OPTION

but "liberated." The Revisionists' position emerged as the gov-
ernment's policy over the years. The Israeli intransigence over
return of the territories, coupled with the rearmed Arabs' de-
sire for revenge, doomed United Nations Resolution 242, which
called for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories in
return for Arab commitments of territorial integrity and peace.
It had been unanimously approved by the United Nations Se-
curity Council in late November 1967.

Things couldn't have gone worse, from the Israeli point of
view, at the Johnson-Eshkol summit meeting in early 1968 at
the President's ranch in Texas. Eshkol and his advisers, includ-
ing Ephraim (EfFy) Evron, the Israeli ambassador to Washing-
ton, who was a Johnson favorite, had sat through a day of
briefings at which a series of Senate and Defense Department
officials argued against selling F-4S to Israel. "Johnson was stif-
fing them on the Nonproliferation Treaty," recalled Harry C.
McPherson, one of the President's advisers. "Finally he gets up
and said, 'Let's all go piss.' So we all go into a huge bathroom
and piss. As Johnson's leaving he sees EfFy looking hangdog.
'What's the matter, EfFy?' EfFy said, 'We're not going to get our
F-4S.' 'Oh goddam, EfFy,' Johnson said, 'you're going to get the
F-4S. But I'm going to get something out of Eshkol. But don't
tell him.' "

McPherson and Evron thought that Johnson's comment
amounted to a commitment, but what Johnson wanted to get,
Israel could not give. One of Dayan's followers recalled the
despair over the seemingly relentless American pressure for
IAEA inspections: "We realized we were out there alone."

Dayan's men were too pessimistic. Israel had the best friend it
could have — the President. Within weeks of the summit meet-
ing with Eshkol, Johnson was presented with a CIA estimate
concluding— for the first time — that Israel had manufactured at
least four nuclear warheads. He ordered CIA Director Richard
M. Helms to bury the report, and Helms obeyed the order, as
he always did.

The CIA estimate was not a result of any intelligence break-
through, explained Carl Duckett, who, by 1968, had become the
Agency's assistant director for science and technology, but

A PRESIDENTIAL GIFT 187

arose out of a dinner he had with Edward Teller, the eminent
nuclear physicist who had devoted much of his life to weapons
building. Duckett had briefed Teller in the past and, as he ac-
knowledged, stood in awe of him. Teller had arranged for the
private dinner to deliver a pointed message, Duckett recalled:
"He was convinced that Israel now had several weapons ready
to go." Teller explained that he had just returned from Israel —
he had a sister living in Tel Aviv and was a frequent visitor
there — where he had many contacts in the Israeli scientific and
defense community. "He'd talked to a lot of his old friends,"
Duckett said, "and he was concerned." Teller was careful to say
that he had no specific information about Israeli nuclear weap-
ons. But it was his understanding, Teller told Duckett, that the
Agency was waiting for an Israeli test before making any final
assessment about Israeli nuclear capability. If so, the CIA was
making a mistake. "The Israelis have it and they aren't going to
test it," Duckett recalled Teller explaining. "They might be
wrong by a few kilotons [on the yield of an untested bomb], but
so what?"

Duckett was as impressed as Teller wanted him to be: "It was
the most single convincing piece of evidence I got the whole
time I was in the CIA."* He reported the conversation to
Helms the next morning: "I can tell you that everybody was
very concerned." The Office of Science and Technology had
just distributed a top-secret estimate on nonproliferation, and
Duckett decided that an update, known inside the intelligence
community as a "Memo to Holders," would be dispatched. "It
was very brief," Duckett recalled. "The conclusion was that
they [the Israelis] had nuclear weapons."

Another factor in that conclusion was the widespread belief
inside the Agency that the Israelis were somehow behind the
reported disappearance of some two hundred pounds of weap-
ons-grade uranium from the Nuclear Materials and Equipment
Corporation (NUMEC), a privately owned nuclear enriching

* Duckett acknowledged that his faith in Teller was shaken more than a little, how-
ever, a few years later when Teller arranged another meeting to confide that he was
convinced that the Soviet Union would conduct a first strike with thermonuclear
weapons across the United States on July 4, 1976 — the two hundredth anniversary of
American independence.

188 THE SAMSON OPTION

plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania. The company's owner, Zalman
Mordecai Shapiro, a devout Jew with close ties to Israel, in-
sisted that the uranium loss — first reported by Shapiro in 1965
— was routine, an inevitable by-product of the difficult task of
enrichment. Duckett and many others in the intelligence com-
munity thought otherwise. Duckett acknowledged that he had
no evidence that Shapiro's uranium had been diverted to Israel,
but "made an assumption" that it had while preparing the up-
dated Israeli estimate. "Assuming a crude device, Israel could
have made four weapons with the Shapiro material," Duckett
said, and the initial draft of the Memo to Holders revealed that
there was new evidence suggesting that Israel had three to four
nuclear weapons.

Without the Teller report and the suspicions about Shapiro,
Duckett acknowledged, the CIA didn't have much to go on.
The Agency had been unable to determine whether Israel had
built, as suspected, an underground chemical reprocessing
plant at Dimona. The Agency also had not been able to pene-
trate any of the military commands or intelligence services of
Israel. And no Israeli had defected to the United States with
nuclear information. The National Security Agency and its
electronic eavesdropping also had not been much help, Duckett
said, although it had provided early evidence suggesting that
some Israeli Air Force pilots had practiced bomb runs in a
manner that made sense only if nuclear weapons were to be
dropped.

Thin as its evidence was, Duckett was now willing to state in
a top-secret written report that Israel was a nuclear power. The
revised estimate was more than a little bit sensitive, Duckett
knew, and he cleared it first with Dick Helms. The CIA direc-
tor told Duckett not to publish the estimate in any form and
also declared that he himself would be the messenger with bad
tidings. Helms walked the Duckett information into the Oval
Office and gave it to the President. Johnson exploded, as Helms
later recounted to Duckett, and demanded that the document
be buried: "Don't tell anyone else, even [Secretary of State]
Dean Rusk and [Defense Secretary] Robert McNamara."
Helms did as he was told, but not without trepidation: "Helms

A PRESIDENTIAL GIFT 189

knew that he would get in trouble with Rusk and McNamara if
they learned that he had withheld it."*

Johnson's purpose in chasing Helms — and his intelligence —
away was clear: he did not want to know what the CIA was
trying to tell him, for once he accepted that information, he
would have to act on it. By 1968, the President had no intention
of doing anything to stop the Israeli bomb, as Helms, Duckett,
Walworth Barbour, William Dale, and a very few others in the
U.S. government came to understand.

Moshe Dayan's unilateral action to push Dimona into full-scale
production carried what should have been a huge risk — a nu-
clear-armed Israel would find it impossible to sign the Non-
proliferation Treaty, and Israel thus would not get its F-4S
from the Johnson administration. The pressure from the Wash-
ington bureaucracy on that issue remained intense, especially
at the Pentagon, where Clark Clifford, who had replaced Rob-
ert McNamara as secretary of defense at the end of January,
and his senior aides were adamant. Clifford and his colleagues
had no idea where their President really stood on the question
of Israel and the NPT. In October 1968, one month before the
presidential election, Johnson formally approved the F-4 sale in
principle, but left the bargaining over delivery dates and other
details to be negotiated. Paul C. Warnke, the assistant secretary
of defense for international security affairs, recalled thinking
there still was "an outside chance" Israel could be forced to
sign the NPT in exchange for immediate delivery. "It was
worth doing," he added, as a sign of a more even-handed ap-
proach to the Middle East.

Warnke called in Yitzhak Rabin, newly named as Israel's am-

* Helms, despite his public image as a suave spymaster, was more of a bureaucrat
than most newsmen and government officials in Washington could imagine. One of
Helms's senior deputies recalled the occasion in the last year of the Johnson adminis-
tration when an angry President ordered a twenty-four-hour halt to all CIA intelli-
gence collection and reporting on Vietnam. The President's goal was to prevent a leak,
and his assumption seemed to be that if he could stop the voluminous traffic to and
from the CIA, he would do just that. Of course, shutting off the communications link
had its obvious perils, and the senior CIA staff were sure that Helms would ignore, or
override, the irrational presidential order. Not so. Although he most certainly knew
better, Helms followed orders and stopped the traffic. "You don't question what a
President can do," the CIA director told his dispirited aides.

190 THE SAMSON OPTION

bassador to Washington, and began asking some tough ques-
tions about the bomb — direct questions that, obviously, had
never before been posed to him by a high-level American offi-
cial. "I was trying to find out what they had," recalled Warnke,
"and then stop it." The discomfited Rabin asked Warnke for a
definition of a nuclear weapon: "I said," added Warnke, " 'It's if
you've got a delivery device in one room and the nuclear war-
head in another room.' " The ambassador then asked: "Do you
have a nuclear weapon unless you say you do?" A Warnke aide,
Harry H. Schwartz, also was at the meeting and recalled an
even tougher Warnke remark. "Mr. Ambassador," Schwartz
quoted Warnke as saying, "we are shocked at the manner in
which you are dealing with us. . . . You, our close ally, are
building nuclear bombs in Israel behind our back." Rabin de-
nied it, said Schwartz.

The ambassador, of course, was enraged by the encounter,
which he subsequently claimed had nothing to do with nuclear
weapons. In his memoirs, published in 1979, Rabin depicted the
basic issue as Warnke's insistence that the United States, as a
condition of the F-4 sale, be permitted to have on-site supervi-
sion of every Israeli arms manufacturing plant and every de-
fense installation engaged in research and development. "To
say I was appalled would be a gross understatement," Rabin
wrote. "I sat there stupefied, feeling the blood rising to my
face." He left the meeting, he added, and began passing "broad
hints" to Israel's supporters in Congress and elsewhere to gen-
erate support for the F-4 sale.

Rabin did more than just pass hints. He and Major General
Mordecai Hod, the Israeli Air Force's chief of staff, went to see
one of the few Americans who could get the President to
change his mind — Abe Feinberg. "They were agitated," Fein-
berg recalled. "Needed to see me right away. 'Everything
you've done about the Phantoms is going down the drain. Clif-
ford is insisting on the NPT.' " Feinberg had met privately a
few weeks earlier with Johnson and Walter Rostow and heard
the President declare that there would be "no conditions" to
the F-4 sale. "So I picked up the telephone," he said, "called the
White House, and asked for Rostow." The national security
adviser was having dinner at Clifford's house, and Feinberg,

A PRESIDENTIAL GIFT 191

who was well known to the White House switchboard opera-
tors, was patched through. "Walt gets on the telephone," con-
tinued Feinberg, u and I say, 'Walt, you and I and the President
were together and Johnson said no conditions.' Walt agrees. I
say, 'When you get back to the table, tell that to Clifford.' "

Clifford, who did not recount the incident in his 1991 mem-
oir, Counsel to the President, telephoned the President and got the
message. Paul Warnke arrived at a later meeting of his staff, all
of whom favored tying the F-4 sale to Israeli acceptance of the
NPT, and dramatically drew his hand across his neck. The
NPT was out. Harry Schwartz recalled Warnke's account of
the Clifford-Johnson dialogue: "Clifford called Johnson and
LBJ said, 'Sell them anything they want.'

" 'Mr. President, I don't want to live in a world where the
Israelis have nuclear weapons.'

" 'Don't bother me with this anymore.' And he hangs up."
Johnson had given essentially that same message at the begin-
ning of the year to Dick Helms'.

In his memoirs, President Johnson recounted with pride the
formal White House ceremony in which the United States,
the Soviet Union, and more than fifty other nations signed the
NPT. The treaty, he wrote, was "the most difficult and most
important ... of all the agreements reached with Moscow"
during his presidency. Why, then, did he make it possible for
Israel to flout the NPT and keep its F-4S? Johnson's decision
had nothing to do with domestic politics or the heavy lobbying
on the issue from Israel's supporters in the Congress: his
abrupt conversation with Clark Clifford took place after Nixon
had won the 1968 Presidential elections. There's also no evi-
dence that Johnson felt he was in debt to the Israeli govern-
ment for its support of his policies in Vietnam; American Jews,
despite that support, were overwhelmingly hostile to the war.
"A bunch of rabbis came here one day in 1967 to tell me that I
ought not to send a single screwdriver to Vietnam," the Presi-
dent complained to Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban in late
1968, "but on the other hand, [the U.S.] should push all our
aircraft carriers through the Strait of Tiran to help Israel."
There is no ready explanation for Johnson's refusal to deal

192 THE SAMSON OPTION

with the Israeli nuclear bomb. His decision not to stop the F-4
sale had given Israel, as Johnson had to know, a high-perfor-
mance aircraft capable of carrying a nuclear weapon on a one-
way mission to Moscow. It was, perhaps, nothing more than
his farewell gift to the Israeli people and his way of repaying
the loyalty of Abe Feinberg.

There is no question that Feinberg enjoyed the greatest pres-
idential access and influence in his twenty years as a Jewish
fund-raiser and lobbyist with Lyndon Johnson. Documents at
the Johnson Library show that even the most senior members
of the National Security Council understood that any issue
raised by Feinberg had to be answered. In late October 1968, for
example, Rostow was given a memorandum by a White House
aide about Israeli press coverage of the "NPT-Phantom prob-
lem . . . just to give you a factual basis for your continued
dealings with Feinberg. . . ." By 1968, the government of Israel
had rewarded Feinberg for his services by permitting him to
become the major owner of the nation's Coca-Cola franchise. It
would quickly become a multimillion-dollar profit center.*

Feinberg's role as a fund-raiser was nonpareil in the Johnson
White House: his cash was, on occasion, supplied directly to
Walter W. Jenkins, the President's most trusted personal aide,
and his fellow political operatives in the White House — and
not to the Democratic Party. There were others in the Jewish
political establishment, men such as Arthur B. Krim, the New
York attorney and president of United Artists, who raised large
amounts of money specifically for the Democratic Party.
Feinberg's status was different, recalled Myer Feldman, John-
son's aide for Jewish affairs: "Abe only raised cash — where it
went only he knows."

Feinberg acknowledged that he had a special cache: U A lot of
people were afraid publicly to give as much as they could, so

* Israel had rewarded other financial supporters with similarly lucrative business
deals. In 1959, for example, Tricontinenal Pipelines, Ltd., an international investment
group controlled by Baron Edmund de Rothschild, was given the concession to operate
a sixteen-inch oil pipeline between Elat and Haifa, via Ashdod. The contract, signed by
then Finance Minister Levi Eshkol on behalf of Israel, committed the state to ship at
least 1.5 million tons of oil through the pipeline for the next fifteen years. Edmund de
Rothschild was, according to Abe Feinberg, another major contributor to Dimona's
start-up costs.

A PRESIDENTIAL GIFT 193

they arranged sub rosa cash payments. It had to be done labori-
ously — man-to-man. Raising money is a very humiliating pro-
cess," he added. "People you don't respect piss all over you."
Feinberg's special status became clear to some in the White
House after the press revealed on October 14, 1964, that Walter
Jenkins had been arrested a week earlier in the bathroom of a
Washington YMCA on homosexual solicitation charges. The
arrest took place three weeks before the 1964 presidential elec-
tion. Johnson, in New York when word of the arrest — which
he had attempted to suppress — became public, insisted that he
and others in the White House distance themselves from the
potentially scandalous incident. There was one immediate
problem: at least $250,000 in cash that had been raised by Fein-
berg was in Jenkins's safe and needed to be removed. Johnson
telephoned Feldman and ordered him and Bill Moyers, another
trusted aide and sometime speechwriter, to clean out Jenkins's
safe. Feldman was not surprised by the assignment: "Jenkins is
the only person who knew everything that was going on. He
took shorthand notes — reams of notes — ever since Johnson
came into the Congress." Feldman also knew that Jenkins was
especially trusted on national security issues. What he and
Moyers did not know was that they would find the Feinberg
money. "Bill said, 'What do we do with this?' I said, 'I don't
know. You handle it.' " The cash was in a briefcase.

Moyers, asked about the incident in early 1991, said his mem-
ory was vague, but acknowledged that "circumstances did lead
me to believe" that Jenkins had a private cache of money in his
safe. "I think there was a private fund. There was a lot of cash
washed around in Washington in those days." Asked specifi-
cally whether the cash was meant for the Democratic cam-
paign, Moyers said, "I don't know and I don't know what
happened to it. Anybody who smelled of money was always
routed to Walter. He was the contact man for the contributors
and he took his secrets to the grave with him."

Moyers, now a prominent television personality, recalled the
time in the Johnson White House when "a guy from North
Carolina came to see me. He'd been routed from Walter — who
wasn't in — to me. He had a leather satchel and left it in my
office. I ran out and told my secretary to find him." The man

194 THE SAMSON OPTION

was grabbed just as he was leaving the West Entrance, but re-
fused to take back the briefcase. "He said," Moyers recounted,
" 'Oh no, I left it for Jenkins and Moyers.' I told her to take it
to Mildred [Walter Jenkins's secretary]."

President Johnson, Moyers added, "was an equal opportu-
nity taker. He'd take from friends and adversaries just because
he thought that's the way the system worked. No decisions
were made on the basis of cash," Moyers added, "but cash did
give you access." Asked about Feinberg, Moyers said, "I always
thought Abe Feinberg had a lot of impact on Johnson; he had a
big role to play."

Harry Schwartz, Paul Warnke's deputy, who died in early 1991,
had a special reason to be frustrated by the Johnson administra-
tion's inability to get Israel to sign the NPT. He had been
stunned a year earlier when a group of Israeli military attaches
had come into his Pentagon office and asked for a Low Altitude
Bombing System (LABS) for nuclear weapons. The computer-
ized bombing system provided time for an aircraft to drop its
weapons and roll away to avoid the blast effects. "I just laughed
at them," recalled Schwartz. The Israelis cited the buildup of
the Egyptian Army across the Sinai Canal and insisted that the
LABS was needed only to "lob" high-explosive bombs onto the
Egyptian emplacements. "I told them," said Schwartz, "that
any American who sells you a bombsight for that purpose is
crazy, and I'm not crazy."

There was a friendly private lunch early in the Nixon ad-
ministration with Ambassador Rabin, well after Israel began
receiving the F-4S. Schwartz decided to bring up the Israeli
bomb, which Israel was still publicly insisting was only an op-
tion: "I think what you should do is what you're doing now.
Don't ever haul one out, because your little government will
disappear. The Soviets almost assuredly have your country
targeted."

"Mr. Schwartz," calmly replied Rabin after a moment, "do
you think we are crazy?"

15

The Tunnel

Israelis have done their best work from below.

The huge underground laboratories at Dimona had their
precedent in the Jewish struggle after World War II against the
British mandatory power in Palestine. The British authorities
had angered David Ben-Gurion and his followers by insisting
that they adhere to the strict limits on Jewish immigration to
Palestine that were set in 1939, after three years of Arab revolts.
The British ruling had meant then that hundreds of thousands
of Eastern European Jews were unable to escape the Holo-
caust. And now those who had somehow managed to survive
were again being denied a chance to come legally to Palestine.
Many were faced with a desperate dilemma: either return to
what was left of their prewar homes and prewar life or remain
in the dispirited and overcrowded displaced persons (DP)
camps scattered across Europe.

The heavily outnumbered and outgunned members of the
Hagannah, the Jewish underground, began the inevitable guer-
rilla war against the British troops with little other than their
guile and determination. One of the war's most imaginative
operations involved what seemed to be yet another farming
kibbutz that was set up in 1946 about fifteen miles outside Tel
Aviv, adjacent to a large British military base. The kibbutz's
administrative building was constructed, seemingly at random,
within a half mile of the base.

"The whole thing was a fraud," recalled Abe Feinberg, who
had been recruited by Ben-Gurion the year before to help raise
money for that and other guerrilla operations. The function of
the kibbutz was not farming, but to provide cover for an elabo-
rate and secret underground plant that was turning out bullets

196 THE SAMSON OPTION

for the Sten submachine gun, the basic weapon of the Hagan-
nah. Metal for the bullets had been shipped into Israel dis-
guised as lipstick tubes, and it cleared British customs without
challenge.

The underground facility had been "scooped out," said Fein-
berg, in twenty-seven days. The men and women who worked
underground alternated that work with farming; those who
completed a shift in the arms factory were ordered to muddy
their shoes and sit under sunlamps so they could appear to the
British and others as if they had been innocently tending crops
or looking after the kibbutz's cows and sheep. Over the next
two years, British soldiers and officers were constant — and un-
suspecting — customers of the kibbutz's bakery and laundry,
which cheerfully offered their services to the military. Feinberg
recalled that a few of the British soldiers even made a point of
coming to the kibbutz's Friday-night Shabbat dinners. Today
the underground bullet factory is known as the Ayalon Mu-
seum, a popular attraction for Israeli schoolchildren.

Located a few hundred feet from the reactor, Dimona's chemi-
cal reprocessing plant looked, on the surface, very much like an
ordinary administration building — a nondescript two-story
windowless facility, eighty by two hundred feet, containing a
workers' canteen and shower rooms, a few offices, some ware-
house space, and an air filtration plant. The building had
thickly reinforced walls, not an unusual safety feature, given its
location. Once inside, there was no hint of what had been dug
out below, apparently to the same dimensions, to a depth of
eighty feet: a six-level highly automated chemical reprocessing
plant. A bank of elevators on the top floor was routinely
bricked over before foreign visitors, such as the American in-
spection teams headed by Floyd Culler, were permitted to
enter the building. (Culler noted in his official reports during
the 1960s that his team had seen evidence of freshly plastered
and painted walls inside Dimona.) No outsider is ever known
to have entered the reprocessing plant, whose long-suspected
existence was not established until 1986, when the London Sun-
day Times published an extraordinary inside account based on

THE TUNNEL 197

extensive interviews with a thirty-one-year-old Moroccan Jew
named Mordecai Vanunu.

Vanunu began working as a technican at Dimona in August
1977 and spent much of the next eight years assigned to various
tasks inside the reprocessing plant, formally known as Machon
2 (machon means "facility" or "institute" in Hebrew) and infor-
mally known as the Tunnel. The reprocessing plant, which
was handling materials that were exceedingly "hot" — that is,
highly radioactive — was the most sensitive area at Dimona;
only 150 of Dimona's 2,700 employes worked there. A special
pass was needed to enter the plant, and all movement inside,
even to and from the bathroom, was — in theory — to be closely
monitored. Vanunu, once at work in the Tunnel, found that the
stringent security existed in theory only. Constantly in trouble
for his public pro- Arab views, he had been laid off in mid-1985
as part of a government-wide cutback. Vanunu appealed
through his union, powerful as are all unions in Israel, and
won back his job. It was at that point that he smuggled a cam-
era into the reprocessing plant during an overnight shift and
wandered around undetected for some forty minutes, taking
fifty-seven color photographs. A few weeks later he was fired
after calling for the formation of a Palestinian state during an
Arab rally. Even then, again with help from his union, Vanunu
was able to negotiate a settlement from Dimona's management
that gave him severance pay and a letter attesting to his good
record.

A combination of factors — disenchantment with his life, dis-
tress at the treatment of Arabs in Israel, and what he had
learned inside Dimona — drove him to exile in Australia and
eventually to the London Sunday Times. The newspaper's edi-
tors and reporters were appropriately skeptical of Vanunu's
account of the goings-on inside Dimona, but the photographs
he had taken proved to be critical in finally establishing his
credibility. However, even as he talked to the Sunday Times, he
was being closely monitored by the Israeli government, whose
operatives have long-standing ties to the London newspaper
world. Copies of some of Vanunu's sensational photographs
had been made available in London — before publication of the
Sunday Times story — to an Israeli intelligence agent masquerad-

198 THE SAMSON OPTION

ing as an American newspaper reporter. The photographs
were sent by courier to the office of Prime Minister Shimon
Peres, who ordered Mossad to get Vanunu out of London and
into Israeli custody. No kidnapping could take place in En-
gland for diplomatic reasons. Instead, the lonely Vanunu was
enticed by a Mossad agent named Cindy Hanin Bentov (a
pseudonym) to leave for Rome a few days before publication of
the story. Once in Rome, Vanunu has told family members, he
was taken by taxi to an apartment, where he was drugged and
returned to Israel by ship to stand trial. He was sentenced in
March 1988 to eighteen years in a maximum-security prison.

Vanunu's Times interview and his photographs of many of
the production units in the Tunnel, or Machon 2, provided the
American intelligence community with the first extensive evi-
dence of Israeli capability to manufacture fusion, or thermonu-
clear, weapons. American intelligence also obtained a copy of
many of the Sunday Times 's interview notes with Vanunu; those
notes, some of which were also made available to the author,
provided much more specific detail of the inner workings of
Dimona than was published. Senior American officials, includ-
ing men and women who have worked in nuclear weapons
production and nuclear intelligence, uniformly agreed that the
unpublished Vanunu notes are highly credible. One intelli-
gence official who has been analyzing Israel's nuclear capability
since the late 1960s depicted Vanunu's information, which in-
cludes a breakdown of the specific function of each unit inside
the Tunnel, as stunning: "The scope of this is much more ex-
tensive than we thought. This is an enormous operation."

The most exhaustive analysis of the Vanunu statements and
photographs was conducted by the Z Division, a special intelli-
gence unit at the Livermore Laboratories whose experts are
considered to be the final word on proliferation issues. It is
responsible for analyzing foreign nuclear weapons, with em-
phasis on Soviet weaponry. "Z Division's only debate was over
the numbers," recalled a former White House nonproliferation
official. Vanunu told the Sunday Times that he believed the Is-
raeli nuclear stockpile totaled more than two hundred war-
heads, an astonishingly high number — the CIA and Defense
Intelligence Agency were estimating into the early 1980s that

THE TUNNEL 199

Israel had only between twenty-four and thirty warheads. "On
the basis of what Z Division knew," added the White House
aide, "it could not relate those kinds of numbers to what they
could see" in the Vanunu photographs.

There was no evidence in the Vanunu materials of additional
cooling capacity for Dimona's reactor, whose output would
have had to have been dramatically increased to produce
enough plutonium for two hundred warheads. Vanunu, how-
ever, in a portion of his interview not published and not made
available to Z Division, explained that a new cooling unit had
been installed at the reactor while he was employed at
Dimona.* American nonproliferation experts had indepen-
dently learned in the last year of the Carter administration of
the boost in Dimona's cooling capacity, further evidence of
Vanunu's credibility as well as proof that the reactor was capa-
ble of operating at a higher level and producing more pluto-
nium.

Of extreme interest to the United States were Vanunu's pho-
tographs of what apparently were full-sized models of Israeli
nuclear weapons.** Copies of those photos were provided to
weapons designers at the Los Alamos and Livermore laborato-
ries for evaluation and analysis, and the designers, working
from the photographs, constructed replicas of the Israeli weap-
ons, as had been done with Soviet weapons in the past. They
concluded that Israel was capable of manufacturing one of the
most sophisticated weapons in the nuclear arsenal — a low-yield
neutron bomb. Such weapons, which first came into the Amer-
ican stockpile in the mid-1970s, utilize enhanced radiation and
minimal blast to kill anything living within a limited range

* Vanunu described the cooling unit to Frank Barnaby, a nuclear physicist and
former employee of Britain's nuclear weapons installation at Aldermaston. Barnaby
spent two days with Vanunu, at the request of the Sunday Times t in a continuing effort
to verify his account. He concluded, the Sunday Times said, that Vanunu's account "is
totally convincing." After leaving government service, Barnaby became director of the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), an arms control study
group funded by the Swedish government.

## Mock-ups are commonly used for training purposes and military briefings in the
American nuclear weapons complex, for the obvious reason that no one would want to
work next to a fully operational nuclear warhead filled with highly enriched materials.
The mock-ups are accurate replicas, in terms of external design and size, of a normal
warhead, and American nonproliferation experts assumed that the Israelis' models
were carefully prepared.

200 THE SAMSON OPTION

with limited damage to property. The weapon actually is a
two-stage thermonuclear device that utilizes tritium and deute-
rium (both by-products of hydrogen), and not lithium deuter-
ide, to maximize the release of neutrons.

The Vanunu information also helped American intelligence
experts date the progress of the Israeli nuclear arsenal. Vanunu
revealed, for example, that Unit 92 in the Tunnel had been
painstakingly removing tritium from heavy water since the
1960s, indicating that physicists at Dimona — following Levi
EshkoFs 1965 plea for advanced research — had been attempting
from the earliest days of Dimona's production to manufacture
"boosted" fission weapons. The United States began experi-
menting in the early 1950s with boosting, which dramatically
increases the yield, or destructiveness, of a single-stage fission
device. Boosting is a process in which small quantities (a few
grams) of tritium and deuterium are inserted directly into a
plutonium warhead and designed to flood the warhead with
additional neutrons at the moment of fission — in essence, jump-
starting the weapon at the moment of critical mass — producing
a bigger kick, or yield, with smaller amounts of plutonium.
Vanunu also told the Sunday Times of returning from a vacation
in 1980 — his first trip abroad since emigrating with his family
to Israel in 1963 — and being assigned then to work at a new
production plant for lithium 6, another essential element of the
hydrogen bomb. In 1984, he further reported, a new facility
(Unit 93) for large-scale production of tritium was opened.
Lithium is irradiated in the reactor, then moved to Unit 93,
where it is heated to release tritium in a gas form, along with
helium and hydrogen. The gases are then driven under high
pressure through an asbestos palladium column and separated.
The helium is stored in powdered uranium and can again be
released by heating. The opening of Unit 93 suggests that full-
scale production of neutron weapons began then, for up to
twenty grams of tritium are used in each neutron warhead.

As described by Vanunu (and confirmed by the author in later
interviews with Israeli officials), Dimona includes the reactor
and at least eight other buildings, or Machons, the most impor-
tant of which is the chemical reprocessing plant. Each building

THE TUNNEL 201

apparently is self-contained. Machon i is the large silver-domed
reactor, sixty feet in diameter, that can be clearly seen from the
nearby highway. The uranium fuel rods remain for three
months in the reactor, which is cooled and moderated by heavy
water. The heavy water is itself cooled by ordinary water flow-
ing through a heat exchanger, creating steam, which in a nu-
clear power plant would drive a turbine and create electricity.
Instead, the steam in Machon i is vented into the atmosphere,
creating a radioactive cloud.* Machon 2 is the chemical
reprocessing plant. Machon 3 converts lithium 6 into a solid for
insertion into a nuclear warhead and also processes natural ura-
nium for the reactor. Machon 4 contains a waste treatment
plant for the radioactive residue from the chemical reproces-
sing plant in Machon 2. Machon 5 coats the uranium rods
(shipped from Machon 3) with aluminum to be consumed in the
reactor. The rods, once stacked in the core of the reactor, pro-
vide the fuel needed to sustain a chain reaction — and capture
weapons-grade isotopes of plutonium. Machon 6 provides basic
services and power for Dimona. Machon 8 contains a labora-
tory for testing samples and experimenting on new manufac-
turing processes; it also is the site of Special Unit 840, where
Israeli scientists have developed a gas centrifuge method of en-
riching uranium for weapons use. There also is a laser-isotope-
reprocessing facility for the enrichment of uranium in Machon
9. Depleted uranium — that is, uranium with very little or no
uranium 235 left — is chemically isolated in Machon 10 for even-
tual shipment to the Israeli Defense Force or sale to arms man-
ufacturers in Europe and elsewhere for use in bullets, armor
plating, and artillery and bomb shells. The shells, buttressed by
the heavy uranium, which is much denser than lead, can easily
penetrate thick armor plating and are a staple in modern arse-
nals. ** (There was no Machon 7 in the years he worked at

* Vanunu said that the steam, contaminated to varying degrees by leaks and corro-
sion, was vented only on those days when the prevailing wind was blowing toward the
Jordanian border, about twenty-five miles to the east. It was one of those ventings,
apparently, that was photographed by Army Colonel Carmelo Alba in 1965, providing
the CIA with the first concrete evidence that Dimona was operational.

** The American forces who fought in Desert Storm, the 1991 war against Iraq,
were equipped with uranium-tipped bullets and antitank munitions. Some of the
American tanks also were equipped with uranium armor plating for added defense
against Iraqi attacks.

202 THE SAMSON OPTION

Dimona, Vanunu told the Sunday Times, and he did not know
what, if anything, had taken place there.)

Dimona's most essential facility, of course, is the reproces-
sing plant in Machon 2, where Vanunu spent most of his ca-
reer. It is here that plutonium, a by-product of the fission
process in the reactor, is extracted by chemical means from the
spent uranium rods. The residual uranium is then reprocessed
and reconstituted for use in new fuel rods. There are at least
thirty-nine separate units in the six underground levels of the
Tunnel, the most important of which is the production hall
where the spent uranium rods undergo reprocessing. Before
reprocessing can begin, however, the rods must be cooled for
weeks in water-filled tanks, reducing radioactivity by a factor
of several thousand. Even then, the radioactive rods are still
lethal and are always handled by remote control and from be-
hind lead shielding. The Tunnel's production hall dominates
levels one through four below ground; work there is monitored
by a large control room that includes an observation area
known to technicians as "Golda's Balcony," a reference to
Golda Meir's frequent visits after she became prime minister in
1969. The end result of the chemical processing, according to
Vanunu, is a weekly average of nine "buttons" of pure pluto-
nium whose combined weight is 1.2 kilograms.

The plutonium is fabricated by machine in a secure area on
level five, the only floor in the Tunnel to which Vanunu was
denied access. He eventually obtained a key and found a series
of separate rooms — isolated for safety reasons — where the
weapons-grade plutonium, now in metal form, is stored inside
sealed glove boxes filled with argon, an inert gas. The glove
boxes are designed so that workers can stand outside the "hot"
area and manipulate remote-controlled robotic devices by hand
to mold the plutonium pellets into microscopically thin hemi-
spheres for insertion into a nuclear warhead. Other chemicals
used in the Israeli nuclear arsenal, including lithium com-
pounds and beryllium, also are machine-fabricated on the fifth
level. Such milling involves exquisite machinery: any micro-
scopic flaw in the interior surface of a bomb core can cause a
significant reduction in the yield, or lead to a nonevent. The
allowable tolerances are difficult for an outsider to compre-

THE TUNNEL 203

hend: the hemisphere of an American-made plutonium war-
head, for example, is permitted to deviate from prescribed
thickness by less than five ten-thousandths of an inch, about
one-sixth the diameter of a human hair.

Once completed, the weapons parts are moved by convoys of
unmarked cars, under armed guard, to another facility to the
north — not known to Vanunu — for assembly into warheads. Is-
raeli officials subsequently told me that the final stage of war-
head production takes place at a defense plant north of Haifa
operated by Rafael, the top-secret Israeli research and manufac-
turing agency that is responsible for Israel's most sensitive
weaponry.

The Tunnel remained in operation around the clock for
thirty-four weeks a year, according to Vanunu, and was shut
down from July to November for routine maintenance and re-
pair. American nuclear experts consulted about Vanunu's story
describe the methods used to reprocess the spent uranium at
Dimona as essentially routine; the industrial solvents and solu-
tions used by the Israelis are the same as those relied upon at
the Savannah River Plant in Aiken, South Carolina, where
state-of-the-art heavy-water-production reactors have operated
since the mid-1950s.

What was surprising, however, was the scope of the Israeli
operation. If Vanunu's information about the rate of plutonium
reprocessing is correct — a steady production rate of 1.2 kilo-
grams weekly — the reactor would be producing enough en-
riched materials for four to a dozen or more bombs a year,
depending on warhead design. The reactor also would have to
be operating at about 120 to 150 megawatts, more than five times
its officially stated output, and consuming nearly one hun-
dred tons of uranium ore a year.* Some American experts be-

* The nuclear fuel cycle is so precise that scientists can compute how much ura-
nium was consumed by Dimona at a given reactor output. According to Vanunu, the
average flow rate of dissolved uranium and plutonium through the chemical reproces-
sing plant was 20.9 liters per hour with a uranium concentration of 450 grams per liter
and a plutonium concentration of 170 to 180 milligrams per liter (or 0.39 milligrams of
plutonium per gram of uranium). Vanunu said, however, that the actual flow rate in
the Tunnel normally exceeded the standard flow rate by 150 to 175 percent, which
corresponds to the reprocessing of as much as thirty-seven kilograms of weapons-grade
plutonium a year, assuming eight months of continuous operation. Nuclear technicians
have further noted that Vanunu claimed that the spent uranium fuel processed at

204 THE SAMSON OPTION

lieve that Vanunu's statistics, whose essential accuracy is not in
dispute, may reflect peak output, and not what is known as the
normal flow rate. If so, Dimona could be producing sixteen to
twenty kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium per year,
enough for four or five warheads.

What especially impressed American experts about Dimona's
reprocessing plant was its location — underground — and its so-
phistication. "You have to understand," an American ex-
plained, "Machon 2 is very sophisticated because it's so hot.
There's an extraordinary level of radioactivity. You need three-
foot lead walls, all automated; people in suits; robotics. You're
going to have a hell of a time keeping it undetected. So you go
very deep." That, in turn, drives up the price of ventilation
shafts, air intakes, and fan systems, as well as all ordinary con-
struction costs.

Going underground also posed enormous engineering risks
that could be met only by superb master planning and expert
intelligence. For example, the construction teams that initially
built the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission's Savannah River
Plant in South Carolina decided to put the thick, lead-shielded
doors that protected the work force on custom-made coasters
with specially engineered automated motors for opening and
closing. "We didn't move the doors often enough," the Ameri-
can added, "and the coasters flattened. The doors were too
heavy and we had misjudged the physics. We had to stop the
process to remove them. We didn't test this beforehand because
we didn't think of it."

The possibility exists, the official said, that the Israelis deter-
mined from the outset that they could avoid such problems by
finding out what had gone right — and wrong — from the Amer-
icans who built the Savannah River Plant. "This is not highly

Dimona contained a smaller concentration of plutonium — about 0.30 milligrams per
gram instead of 0.39 milligrams per gram — suggesting that as much as 125 metric tons of
uranium was needed to operate the reactor, far more than officially estimated. It is
impossible to even roughly determine the amount of plutonium that has been produced
at Dimona without knowing the power output and operating history of the reactor.
That information remains a closely guarded state secret in Israel. The general accuracy
and scientific validity of Vanunu's statistical data added to his credibility with Ameri-
can intelligence officials.

THE TUNNEL 205

classified information — it's dumb-shit stuff that has to be done.
That kind of intelligence is crucial to not having to reinvent
the wheel. Anything you can learn about what the other guy
has learned just leaps you forward." This, presumably, was one
of the missions of Binyamin Blumberg and his Office of Special
Tasks, which became known in the mid-1970s as the Science
Liaison Bureau, or LAKAM. Blumberg's agents were operat-
ing all over the world, collecting available technical informa-
tion and also setting up front companies in Europe and Latin
America for the purchase from the United States of high-tech
equipment whose export to Israel would not be permitted.

Another area of great sensitivity involved the science of
robotics, whose most important early use in the United States
came in the hot weapons laboratories where humans could not
work. The precision involved in machining the thin plutonium
hemispheres and placing them around the gases needed to cre-
ate boosted nuclear weapons was achieved only after enormous
strides had been made in the use of remote control. It was not
an accident that Aharon Katzir (formerly Katchalsky), who be-
came, like Ernst Bergmann, an intellectual force inside the Is-
raeli Atomic Energy Commission, was world-renowned for his
research into robotics at the Weizmann Institute. Katzir was
even featured with some of his research apparatus on the cover
of the December 3, 1966, issue of the Saturday Review; the article
was entitled "Man's First Robot with Muscles." It reported on
Katzir's pioneering work in converting chemical energy into
the energy of motion. Katzir's team at the Weizmann Institute
also was concentrating on the development of artificial muscle
tissue for use in robots. His research was heavily funded by the
U.S. Air Force's Office of Scientific Research; the Air Force's
primary interest was in utilizing robotics in outer-space re-
search. The Air Force had no idea that it was also helping to
underwrite research for the Israeli nuclear arsenal; nor did it
know that Katzir's main work was being done at Dimona, and
not at the Weizmann Institute.

Vanunu's revelations staunchly reaffirmed the recurring sus-
picions of many in the American intelligence community that
Israel either had covertly tested its advanced thermonuclear
weapons, all of which needed to be miniaturized to fit into

206 THE SAMSON OPTION

bombs and missile warheads, or somehow had managed to ob-
tain illicitly the results of American testing. "We'd go through
ten to twelve underground tests [at the American underground
range in Nevada] just to come up with the data," one weapons
expert recalled. "How could they spend that kind of money
[for the underground reprocessing plant] without having
tested? You'd have to be so certain of your intelligence. You just
can't afford to be wrong."

Despite such comments, there remains no actual evidence
that Israel needed outside help for its nuclear weaponry. Dr.
George A. Cowan, who spent more than twenty years design-
ing nuclear weapons at Los Alamos, acknowledged that there
always was a close association with Israeli physicists from the
Weizmann Institute. "They've visited the labs [Los Alamos and
Livermore] and probably are treated more openly than other
visitors here, but there's too much emphasis to the notion that
there's a secret that somebody has to tell them," Cowan said.
"The Israelis are smart enough to do their own research. The
need for secret information is largely promoted by spy novel-
ists. There's very much less to it than most people believe."
Like many of the scientists in the American nuclear laborato-
ries, Cowan has a close Israeli friend who was involved with
Dimona: "He never asked me anything over the years about the
bomb and wouldn't have." Similarly, physicist Hans Bethe, the
Nobel laureate who helped design the first American nuclear
and thermonuclear weapons, recalled three visits to the
Weizmann Institute during which his hosts would "take me
anywhere and discuss anything with me. They knew I was
interested in nuclear power reactors," he added, "and yet they
never offered to take me to Dimona. I found that significant."

If there was any solace for the American intelligence commu-
nity in the wake of the startling Vanunu disclosures, which
gave Washington the most specific evidence of an Israeli
reprocessing plant, it was in the conviction that the extraordi-
nary degree of master planning that had to take place at
Dimona was little appreciated by senior officials in the Israeli
chain of command. "It's unlikely," said one expert, "that the
top people in the government of Israel truly understood" what

THE TUNNEL 207

was taking place at Dimona — just as America's intelligence ex-
perts had failed to understand.

The American experts got that one right, at least. Shimon
Peres has confided to friends that during the early construction
of Dimona he often signed requisition orders and other techni-
cal documents on behalf of the Ben-Gurion government with-
out knowing precisely what he had approved.

16

Prelude to War

Israel's development as a full-blown nuclear power by
1969 could not have come at a more fortuitous time, in terms of
the American presidency. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger
approached inauguration day on January 20, 1969, convinced
that Israel's nuclear ambitions were justified and understand-
able. Once in office, they went a step further: they endorsed
Israel's nuclear ambitions.

The two American leaders also shared a contempt for the
1968 Nonproliferation Treaty, which had been so ardently en-
dorsed in public by Lyndon Johnson. Nixon, midway in his
campaign against Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, dis-
mayed the arms control community by urging the Senate to
delay ratification of the NPT until after the election. He went
further a few days later, telling newsmen in Charlotte, North
Carolina, that he specifically was concerned about the NPT's
failure to permit the transfer of "defensive nuclear weapons,"
such as mines or antiballistic missile systems, to non-nuclear
powers. Government arms controllers were hugely relieved in
early February 1969 when Nixon formally requested the Senate
to take up the treaty and then stated at a news conference that
he would do all he could to urge France and West Germany —
known to have reservations — to sign it: "I will make it clear
that I believe that ratification of the treaty by all governments,
nuclear and non-nuclear, is in the interest of peace and in the
interest of reducing the possibility of nuclear proliferation."

In the secrecy of their offices, however, as only a few in the
government knew, Nixon and Kissinger had simultaneously
issued a presidential order to the bureaucracy undercutting all
that was said in public. The classified document, formally

210 THE SAMSON OPTION

known as National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM)
No. 6, stated that "there should be no efforts by the United
States government to pressure other nations, particularly the
Federal Government of Germany, to follow suit [and ratify the
NPT]. The government, in its public posture, should reflect a
tone of optimism that other countries will sign or ratify, while
clearly disassociating itself [in private] from any plan to bring
pressure on these countries to sign or ratify."

"It was a major change in American policy," recalled Morton
H. Halperin, then Kissinger's closest aide on the National Se-
curity Council staff. "Henry believed that it was good to spread
nuclear weapons around the world. I heard him say that if he
were the Israelis, he would get nuclear weapons. He did not
believe that the United States should try and talk them out of
it." Kissinger also told his staff in the first months of 1969 that
Japan, as well as Israel, would be better off with the bomb than
without it. He was convinced, said Halperin, that nuclear
weapons were essential to the national security of both nations.
Kissinger's view was essentially pragmatic, added Halperin:
most of the major powers would eventually obtain nuclear
weapons, and the United States could benefit the most by help-
ing them to do so rather than by participating in futile exer-
cises in morality, such as the Nonproliferation Treaty.

Kissinger's support for Israel's nuclear weapons program, as
spelled out during his 1968 meeting at General Elad Peled's
home, was widely known to the Israeli leadership. If an overt
sign of the administration's stand was needed, it came quickly,
with the decision in 1969 to end the Floyd Culler inspections of
Dimona. The inspections, begun in 1962, had long been consid-
ered by the American arms control community to be important
in principle but in practice to have marginal utility; they
dragged on without change, nonetheless, through the Johnson
years. Israel resented the inspections as an intrusion on its sov-
ereignty; there also was fear that Culler or one of his team
might actually stumble onto something useful, especially as
Dimona began gearing up in the late 1960s for the full-scale
production of warheads.

Culler's inspection in 1969 seemed to some Americans to be

PRELUDE TO WAR 21 I

especially pointless, in the wake of President Johnson's last-
minute decision to allow Israel to purchase its much-desired
F-4S without insisting — as the State Department and Pentagon
wanted — on Israeli ratification of the NPT in exchange. "Cul-
ler's team came on a Saturday and spent only a few hours,"
recalled the late Joseph Zurhellen, then senior deputy to Am-
bassador Wally Barbour in Tel Aviv. "You just can't walk in
and take a guided tour. You've got to do an awful lot to deter-
mine what's been done to a reactor." Zurhellen had no illusions
about what was going on at Dimona: "The French had pulled
the wool over our eyes and so had the Israelis." His point, in a
memorandum he forwarded to Washington, was essentially one
of public relations: the Israelis "could claim that our inspection
showed Dimona to be clean, when in fact it showed nothing at
all." Such complaints had been voiced before.

But now Washington found it convenient to end the charade,
and the inspections ended. They were never to be reinstated, as
the Nixon administration made a judgment that would become
American policy for the next two decades: Israel had gone nu-
clear, and there was nothing that the United States could — or
wanted to — do about it.

The new policy soon worked its way through the bureaucracy,
which reacted as the bureaucracy always did: it followed orders
— with varying degrees of resentment. Charles N. Van Doren,
who was deputy general counsel of the Arms Control and Dis-
armament Agency in the Nixon administration, was convinced
that Israel was the "Achilles heel" of America's NPT policy:
"We were winking at it." Van Doren, who persevered for nine-
teen years in the arms control bureaucracy, recalled he had
repeatedly tried under Nixon and Kissinger "to get the NPT
on the agenda for talks on the Middle East, but I was told there
was too much on the table." He understood the underlying
reason, of course: "An order had gone out that no nuclear in-
formation on Israeli proliferation was to be put out. It was very
frustrating."*

* In November 1969, Kissinger and Nixon decided that "budgetary constraints"
made it impossible for the United States to underwrite the much-discussed Israeli
ambitions for a nuclear desalting plant. Israeli officials subsequently explained the

212 THE SAMSON OPTION

The Nixon and Kissinger tolerance for a nuclear Israel also
was reflected by the media. In July 1970, Carl Duckett's intelli-
gence report on Israel's nuclear arsenal, which had been ini-
tially suppressed in 1968 by Lyndon Johnson and later by
Richard Helms, the CIA director, finally made its way onto the
front page of the New York Times — and nobody cared. The Times
story, written by Washington correspondent Hedrick Smith,
provided the American public with its first account of the
CIA's assessment of the Israeli nuclear arsenal, beginning with
its lead sentence: "For at least two years the United States Gov-
ernment has been conducting its Middle East policy on the
assumption that Israel either possesses an atomic bomb or has
component parts available for quick assembly." The Smith
story also described Israel's progress in developing its Jericho I
missile system and revealed that a manufacturing plant had
been set up near Tel Aviv for the production of solid propel-
lants and engines for the missiles. Smith recalled trying for two
years to get the article published in the Times, and failing be-
cause "I just didn't have it hard enough." He was given a boost
that July by Senator Stuart Symington, the Missouri Demo-
crat, who acknowledged on a Sunday television interview show
that there was "no question that Israel is doing its best to de-
velop nuclear weapons." The Symington peg helped Smith get
the story published a few days later; the reporter, experienced
in covering diplomatic affairs, awaited the attention he was
sure the article would attract from others in the media and the
Congress. Nothing happened. "I was astonished," Smith said.
"Nobody could get near it. The networks didn't go for it."
Neither did any of the Times's newspaper competitors, who
found it impossible to confirm the story. "I had a sense of being
way out in front of the field," said Smith. The reporter did hear
from the Israeli embassy in Washington; there was a subse-
quent meeting with a "very upset" Ambassador Yitzhak Rabin.

decision not in terms of costs, but as stemming from a concern that the nuclear-pow-
ered plant would become too much of a target for Arab terrorism in the wake of the
Six-Day War and the renewed War of Attrition with Egypt. Nonetheless, the White
House's decision, promulgated as NSDM 32, signed on behalf of the President by
Kissinger, effectively ended the dispute over the Johnson administration's insistence on
linking financial support for the plant to an Israeli commitment to permit inspection
by the IAEA.

PRELUDE TO WAR 213

"He repeated the standard line that Israel would not be the
first to use it," said Smith, who recalled asking Rabin if he was
specifically denying the story: "Rabin would not answer."

By mid-1971, the White House's permissive attitude toward
the Israeli bomb made it possible for even those officials re-
sponsible for monitoring the shipment of sensitive materials to
look the other way. Glenn R. Cella, a foreign service officer,
was assigned that summer to handle political-military affairs on
the State Department's Israeli desk; he also was named the de-
partment's representative on the Middle East Task Force, an
interagency group whose main mission was to monitor Ameri-
can arms transfer policies. Cella, who had served in Morocco,
Algeria, and Egypt, began asking about the Israeli bomb and
quickly learned of Duckett's suppressed estimate. He also
learned that if there was going to be any pressure on Israel to
stop its nuclear weapons program, it would not come from the
task force or the State Department. Israel was then pushing for
the immediate shipment of more F-4S, and the State Depart-
ment's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) had been
ordered to make a study of the military balance in the region.
The study, when completed, made no mention of Israeli nu-
clear capability, to Cella's dismay. "I thought we ought to face
up to the fact that they had it," Cella said, u but nobody was
allowed to talk about it."

A few months later, Cella was notified that an Israeli request
for the sale of krytrons had been routinely approved by his
Pentagon counterpart on the task force. Krytrons, the inquisi-
tive Cella was informed, were sensitive electronic timing de-
vices used to trigger strobe lights. "I remember calling up [the
Pentagon task force member] and being told, in essence, that
you could buy this thing in a Hechinger's [a popular Washing-
ton chain of hardware stores]," recalled Cella. "I wasn't told it
was a central part in nuclear weaponry. Then I learned kry-
trons triggered nuclear bombs." The high-speed device, whose
export usually is closely monitored, is essential for the precise
detonation of the chemical explosives that cause implosion in a
nuclear weapon — facts that should have been known to the
Pentagon official.

Cella stayed on the Middle East desk for two years and

214 THE SAMSON OPTION

quickly became marked, he said, as an Arabist — "which I re-
sented." He'd learned his lesson, however. A year later the U.S.
budget somehow included funds earmarked for the supply of
two supercomputers to the Weizmann Institute. The com-
puters' function, Cella knew, included nuclear simulation. "It
was clear what they were for," he said, "but I didn't even try to
fight it."

The atmosphere wasn't much better at CIA headquarters.
Richard Helms, the consummate bureaucrat, continued to
please his superiors by stifling significant intelligence about the
Israeli bomb. He'd also come to a personal conclusion about
Israeli intelligence, repeatedly telling his deputies and aides
that he was convinced Israel was funneling American satellite
information to the Soviet Union. "The CIA got a copy of the
Israeli [intelligence] requirements list in late 1972," Carl Duck-
ett explained. "The Israelis were asking their contacts [in
America] for overhead [satellite] intelligence. Helms was con-
vinced the Israelis were doing it on behalf of the Soviets. He
thought Israel was an open pipeline for pumping intelligence
to Moscow." There was, of course, a much more direct expla-
nation, one that Duckett and Helms could not envision in the
early 1970s: Israel wanted the satellite imagery of the Soviet
Union because of its own nuclear targeting needs.*

The men and women in the bureaucracy understood, as did
Helms, that the Israeli nuclear issue was taboo. "The issue had
never been dealt with at the working level in State," explained
David E. Long, a State Department Near East expert. Those
State Department and Pentagon staff officers who in the early
1970s wanted to learn more about Israel's nuclear weapons
could not, Long added, because such intelligence carried the
highest order of classification: "Whenever you moved an inch

* Helms had no knowledge of science and found it difficult to testify as CIA director
on technical nuclear issues before the Joint Atomic Energy Commission, as his position
required. To his credit, Duckett said, Helms asked for help, and a series of educational
briefings was arranged, amid great secrecy, in his office. At the first session, Helms was
asked by his instructor, one of the Agency's leading experts in nuclear fission, whether
he'd ever studied physics in high school. The answer was no. "Okay," said the instruc-
tor, "we're going to start with the table of elements." Helms eventually spent a day
with Duckett and other government officials at the nuclear underground test center in
Nevada. After serving nearly eight years as the head of the CIA, he was appointed
ambassador to Iran by Richard Nixon in early 1973.

PRELUDE TO WAR 215

in that direction, you had to decide whether you wanted to
make a crusade or get on with your job." On the other hand,
Long said that he and others were constantly being informally
questioned about Israel's nuclear arms by diplomats from the
Middle East: "My response was to say that we don't know any-
thing and here is what the Israelis say." Long recalled once
being asked by a superior to put that response in writing, in a
formal diplomatic note to a Middle Eastern nation. He refused.
"I backed away and argued that we just should say 'No com-
ment,' " he recalled. "I thought that delivering a deliberately
false impression went beyond subterfuge. I wasn't a crusader. I
just asked that someone else deliver the note. And they did."
Curtis F. Jones similarly spent his career as a Middle East ex-
pert in the Foreign Service; his final assignment from 1971 to
1975 was as director of Near East, North African, and South
Asian affairs for the Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
"Stopping Israeli nuclear weapons was never an issue for the
U.S. government, for as long as I was there," Jones said. u We
never sat down and talked about it."

The easing of the pressure from Washington removed any con-
straints on Dimona and the Israeli leadership, which correctly
interpreted the end of the Culler inspections as an American
carte blanche. The technicians and scientists at Dimona began
operating in the early 1970s exactly as their American and So-
viet counterparts had done in the first days of the Cold War —
the Israelis made as many bombs as possible.*

By 1973, according to former Israeli government officials, the
Israeli nuclear arsenal totaled at least twenty warheads, with
three or more missile launchers in place and operational at

* Between 1945 an d 1985 the United States manufactured an estimated sixty thou-
sand nuclear warheads for 116 weapons systems, an average production rate of four per
day. These ranged from huge thermonuclear city busters to an atomic warhead for a
jeep-mounted bazooka. In a 1985 essay, three critics of the American arsenal, Robert S.
Norris, Thomas B. Cochran, and William M. Arkin, concluded: "Bureaucratic compe-
tition and inertia have led to nuclear warheads for every conceivable military mission,
arm of service, and geographic theater — all compounded by a technological momentum
that overwhelmed what should have been a more sober analysis of what was enough
for deterrence. The result is a gigantic nuclear weapons system — laboratories, produc-
tion facilities, forces, and so on — that has become self-perpetuating, conducting its
business out of public view and with little accountability."

216 THE SAMSON OPTION

Hirbat Zachariah; Israel also had an unknown number of mo-
bile Jericho I missile launchers that had been manufactured as
part of Project 700. The missiles had been capable since 1971 of
hitting targets in southern Russia, including Tbilisi, near the
Soviet oil fields, and Baku, off the coast of the Caspian Sea, as
well as Arab capitals. There also was a squadron of nuclear-
capable F-4 fighters on twenty-four-hour alert in underground
revetments at the Tel Nof air base near Rehovot. The specially
trained F-4 pilots were the elite of the Israeli Air Force and
were forbidden to discuss their mission with any outsider. The
long-range F-4S were capable of flying one-way to Moscow
with a nuclear bomb; the daring pilots would have to be resup-
plied by an airborne tanker to make it home.

By this time, Dimona had solved many of the basic problems
of weapons miniaturization; the smaller warheads provided Is-
raeli weapons designers with an array of options that included
the development of low-yield tactical weapons for battlefield
use. The United States had done its part by approving the sale
of long-range 175mm and 203mm cannons to the Israeli Defense
Force in the early 1970s; those weapons, capable of striking
targets twenty-five miles away, also became part of the Israeli
nuclear option. American intelligence later learned that Israel
had experimented by fusing together two long-range artillery
barrels to produce a cannon capable of hurling a shell more
than forty-five miles.

The Israelis also had contracted with Dr. Gerald Bull, a con-
troversial Canadian arms designer, for the supply of specially
configured artillery shells whose range was extended as much
as 25 percent.* There were some American weapons experts

* Bull was killed outside his home in Brussels in March 1990 by assassins widely
suspected of working on behalf of the Israelis. At the time of his death, Bull had
accomplished for Iraq's artillery what he had done for the Israelis. There was high-
level Israeli concern over Bull's success in constructing a "supergun" for the Iraqis — a
weapon, as the Israelis knew only too well, that provided Iraq with the ability to
threaten Israel with long-range chemical, biological, or conventional high-explosive
shells. Bull's initial contracts with Israel phased out in the mid-1970s; his firm, the
Space Research Corporation (SRC), later did business with South Africa and China
from an eight-thousand-acre compound straddling the Vermont-Canadian border.
Bull's partners in SRC during much of the 1970s included the Arthur D. Little Com-
pany, a highly respected management research firm. Four executives from Arthur D.
Little were on the SRC board of directors. The mysterious Bull spent six months in a
federal jail after pleading guilty in 1980 to one count of selling cannons, shells, and a

PRELUDE TO WAR 217

who understood what Israel's real goal had to be, given the
inaccuracy of an artillery shell fired at such long range. "If
you're going forty-five miles and precision is three percent of
range," explained one expert, "what would you hit with an HE
[high explosive] shell? Nothing much. You'd need a nuclear
weapon." This American, who was a senior official at one of
the U.S. Army's weapons testing facilities, had visited Israel in
1973 an d h a d been told of the intended use of the long-range
cannons, information he dutifully reported to U.S. intelli-
gence. There also were suggestions, added the American, that
Israel had targeted Damascus, Syria's capital, with the special
cannons during the Yom Kippur War. Washington got the mes-
sage. A senior State Department intelligence official recalled
widespread concern in the early 1970s over the ambitious Israeli
artillery program. "Our supposition was that they'd developed
a miniaturized [nuclear] artillery shell and wanted to test it,"
the official said.

As the Israeli weapons program prospered, there was a new
element of caution inside the Israeli government and the mili-
tary commands. The political struggles and infighting were put
aside as the new weapon became standardized for battlefield
use. There was doctrine to write and training to get done. The
Israeli leadership had to work out procedures for the actual use
of the bomb; at one early stage it was agreed that no nuclear
weapon could be armed and fired without authorization from
the prime minister, minister of defense, and army chief of staff.
The rules of engagement subsequently were modified to in-
clude the head of the Israeli Air Force; the air force's warheads
were reportedly maintained in preassembled units in special
secure boxes that could be opened only with three keys, to be
supplied by representatives of the top civilian and military
leadership. Other fail-safe mechanisms, if any, could not be
learned. "The day we had enough bombs to feel comfortable,"
one Israeli military officer explained, "we stopped talking
about it. People realized the moment that the bomb was upon
us that we'd become targets, too."

radar van to South Africa without a license — although he insisted until his death that
his activities on behalf of South Africa had been sanctioned by the American intelli-
gence community.

218 THE SAMSON OPTION

The increased security of the early 1970s had one immediate
casualty: Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan. Dayan's standing
among his peers in the military and the upper echelons of the
Israeli government was far lower than among the public; he
was considered overrated as a military leader and suspect be-
cause of his incessant womanizing and his financial wheeling
and dealing — there was categorical evidence, never officially
acted upon, of his appropriation of excavated antiquities for
personal use, in direct violation of Israeli law.* The main com-
plaint about Dayan, however, was over his propensity to talk:
one close army associate declared that "he had the biggest
mouth in the world." The Israeli added: "The feeling was that
he was a loose cannon at a time when Israel was in a very
precarious situation. We wanted the Arabs to know what we
had" — without explicitly saying too much. Dayan, with his
public statements and leaks to the press, blurred that tactic.
There was another problem, the Israeli added: "Dayan went to
bed with everything that moved" — not that unusual a trait
among aggressive Israeli military men — "but he was totally ca-
pable of meeting a good-looking woman and telling her about
Dimona. He and Peres felt like they were almost parents" of
the nuclear complex. While Dayan lost no authority, it was
eventually made clear to him, the Israeli said, that he was no
longer welcome at Dimona; he no longer had a military need to
know anything about the Israeli nuclear program, which was
being managed out of the prime minister's office.

Tragedy struck the program in May 1972, when Aharon
Katzir, the innovative physicist in charge of Dimona, was
killed in a Japanese Red Army terrorist attack at Lod Airport
near Tel Aviv; there is no evidence that Katzir was specifically
targeted. His replacement, Shalheveth Freier, was a nuclear

* Dayan outraged many of his countrymen after the Six-Day War, when the biblical
lands of the West Bank and Gaza were once again open to Israeli academics and archae-
ologists, by commandeering military units to cordon off areas known to be rich in
antiquities. Dayan, with the help of the troops, would then remove artifacts — many of
them invaluable — for his personal gain. He eventually established an antique garden in
the rear of his home in Zahala, an exclusive suburb of Tel Aviv. The minister of
defense's activities led to occasional critiques in the Israeli press, but no government
investigation. Americans who served as diplomats and military attaches in Israel have
acknowledged the purchase of antiques from Dayan, who invariably insisted on pay-
ment in American dollars.

PRELUDE TO WAR 219

physicist with impeccable credentials; he had served as scien-
tific counselor to the Israeli embassy in Paris in the critical
days of the 1950s, when the Israeli-French nuclear understand-
ing was reached. Freier also enjoyed high standing among in-
ternational scientists and was particularly well known to
American nuclear weapons designers, many of whom under-
stood exactly what he did.

The researchers at Dimona and the Weizmann Institute con-
tinued to produce superb work. In 1973, two Israeli scientists
caused a stir in the academic and intelligence world by receiv-
ing a West German patent for a laser process that, as they
claimed, could cheaply produce as much as seven grams of ura-
nium enriched to 60 percent U-235 in twenty-four hours. The
research paid off six years later, according to Mordecai
Vanunu, when Dimona opened a special Machon for the pro-
duction of laser-enriched uranium.

The burgeoning nuclear bastion at Dimona may have officially
remained a secret to the world, but the Israeli intelligence com-
munity discovered in the early 1970s that the Soviet KGB had
penetrated the top offices of the defense ministry and intelli-
gence establishment and was relaying the essentials of major
strategic decisions to Moscow and its allies in the Middle East.
The unraveling of the Soviet operation was initiated by one of
the most secret units in the Israeli military, Detachment 515
(later redesignated Detachment 8200), which is in charge of sig-
nals intelligence and code-breaking — the Israeli equivalent of
the U.S. National Security Agency.

One of the detachment's most senior officers was Reuven
(Rudi) Yerdor, an accomplished linguist who had cracked a So-
viet code — for which he later received Israel's highest defense
medal — that had masked the communications between KGB
headquarters in Moscow and its regional base in Cyprus. The
Israelis began poring over the backlog of undeciphered Soviet
message traffic and discovered that many of the major secret
decisions of the Israeli defense ministry, including those deal-
ing with nuclear weapons, were being reported to Moscow
within, in some cases, twelve hours. "They went apeshit," re-
called a former Israeli intelligence officer, "and set up a special

220 THE SAMSON OPTION

team to begin an investigation." The team was headed by Shin
Beth, Israel's internal security agency, and included members
from Mossad and Prime Minister Meir's office. Yet it was un-
able to find out how the KGB, which continued its spying dur-
ing the secret inquiry, was able to transmit its intelligence out
of Israel. The investigators were able, however, to determine
that only a small number of Israeli officials had access to all the
material that had been funneled to the KGB — including at least
one of Golda Meir's personal aides. A few of the suspects, in-
cluding the aide, cleared themselves by passing lie detector
tests; others chose not to take the test, and the matter was left
unresolved, to the acute frustration of the investigators.*

There was an ironic twist to the spy scandal, for the senior
leadership of the Israeli government understood from the mo-
ment of the first collaboration with the French that the Soviets
not only were the primary targets of the nuclear arsenal but
would be among the first to be told of its existence. By 1973,
Dimona's success in miniaturization enabled its technicians to
build warheads small enough to fit into a suitcase; word of the
bomb in a suitcase was relayed to the Soviet Union, according
to a former Israeli intelligence official, during one of what ap-
parently was a regular series of meetings in Europe between
representatives of Mossad and the KGB. The Soviets under-
stood that no amount of surveillance could prevent Israeli
agents from smuggling nuclear bombs across the border in au-
tomobiles, aircraft, or commercial ships.

Israel's leadership, especially Moshe Dayan, had nothing but
contempt for the Arab combat ability in the early 1970s. In
their view, Israel's main antagonist in the Middle East was and
would continue to be the Soviet Union. Dimona's arsenal,
known by the Kremlin to be targeted as much as possible at

* One of the most nagging questions of the inquiry had to do with the transmission
of the intelligence. How did the KGB spies get the information out? At one point, a
knowledgeable Israeli said, the investigators turned to the National Security Agency
for help, but the NSA was unable to come up with an answer. Years later, an Iranian
general spying for the KGB in Iran was arrested and found to be carrying an American
satellite communication device, which he had used for filing his intelligence reports.
"Once he was caught," the former Israeli officer added, "they said, 'Ah-ha. This ex-
plains why no messages [out of Israel] were intercepted.' The Soviets stole the Ameri-
can satcom device and did better with it than we did."

PRELUDE TO WAR 221

Soviet cities, theoretically would deter the Soviets from sup-
porting an all-out Arab attack on Israel; the bombs also would
give pause to any Egyptian or Syrian invasion plans.

These were years of status quo for Israeli diplomacy. Israel
had a steady flow of American arms and American acquies-
cence in its continued control of the occupied territories,
where settlements were systematically being constructed.
Those territories, and the land they added to the national bor-
ders, had done nothing to diminish Israel's hunger for more
advanced weapons — defense spending rose by 500 percent be-
tween 1966 and 1972.

The death of Nasser in September 1970 had not altered the
basic equation in the Middle East; his successor, Anwar Sadat,
was, in the view of Prime Minister Golda Meir and her cabinet,
nothing more than yet another unyielding threat to Jews. The
new Egyptian leader had been jailed by the British authorities
during much of World War II because of his openly pro-Ger-
man stance and his public endorsement of Hitler; the fact that
his actions were more anti-British than pro-German was of lit-
tle solace to the Israeli leadership. Sadat, however, broke new
ground by offering the Israelis a peace agreement shortly after
taking office — the first Arab leader willing even to discuss such
a commitment. In return, the Israelis were to withdraw to the
1967 borders. The Sadat offer was rejected out of hand by Golda
Meir (only Dayan urged that it be explored); she viewed the
compromise as nothing more than a starting point for extended
negotiations.

Sadat waited for Washington to intervene. That did not hap-
pen, and the bitterly disappointed Egyptian president, in trou-
ble at home and ridiculed by many of his Middle Eastern peers,
tried again in mid-1972 to get Washington's respect; he abruptly
ordered Soviet troops and advisers out of Egypt to demon-
strate, in part, that Egypt was not pro-Communist. Nixon and
Kissinger were astonished, as was the rest of the world, at the
Soviet ouster, but they mistakenly viewed it as only reaffirma-
tion of their policy of support for Israel. Kissinger went fur-
ther and privately reviled Sadat as a fool who, by acting
unilaterally and emotionally, had thrown away an opportunity
to use the Soviet explusion as a bargaining tool. Sadat ended up

222 THE SAMSON OPTION

with no diplomatic gains from the West and eventually con-
cluded that the only way he— and Egypt — would be taken seri-
ously was to go to war with Israel.

Israel, preoccupied by the Soviet threat, saw the expulsion as
diminishing any real chance of war. On paper, Israel's army
and air force were more than a match for even the combined
forces of the Arab Middle East. Without Soviet backing, no
Arab nation would dare to initiate a fight. There would be no
peace, perhaps, but there was no immediate threat to continued
Israeli control of the captured territories. This message came
through loud and clear in the late summer of 1973 to Kenneth B.
Keating, a former Republican senator from New York who was
Wally Barbour's replacement as U.S. ambassador to Israel. In
August, Keating and his deputy, Nicholas A. Veliotes, paid a
courtesy call on Moshe Day an, whom they found to be not just
confident, but swaggering. There had been constant talk that
summer of an impending Arab attack, Veliotes recalls, and the
embassy had been put on a higher alert. Dayan was asked if he
was worried. His response, recalled Veliotes, was " 'Don't
worry.' He described the Arab armies in the desert as 'rusty
ships slowly sinking' — as if the desert were a sea. It was very
arrogant." Dayan's comments were accepted without challenge
at the time, said Veliotes: "We had a great belief that the Israelis
knew more than we did. We also were mesmerized by 1967" —
the Six-Day War.

Israel wasn't ready when Sadat attacked across the Sinai and
Syria invaded the Golan Heights on Saturday, October 6, 1973
— Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the
year for a Jew. The first days were a stunning rout. Israeli
soldiers were being killed as never before; some units simply
fled in disarray from battle. Five hundred tanks and forty-nine
aircraft, including fourteen F-4 Phantoms, were lost in the first
three days. In the Sinai, Egyptian forces, equipped with mis-
siles and electronic defenses, blasted through the Bar-Lev de-
fense line along the eastern bank of the canal and soon had two
large armies on the eastern bank. The initial Israeli counterat-
tacks by three tank divisions were beaten off". On the Golan
Heights, Syrian forces, bolstered by fourteen hundred tanks,
rolled through Israeli defenses and moved to the edge of Gali-

PRELUDE TO WAR 223

lee. Only a few Israeli tanks stood between the Syrians and the
heavily populated Hulla Valley. Haifa was just hours away.

Many Israelis thought it was all over — that, as Moshe Dayan
said, "this is the end of the Third Temple." The extent of
Dayan's panic on Monday, October 8, has never been fully re-
ported, but it is widely known among Israelis. One of Dayan's
functions as defense minister was to provide the censored me-
dia and their editors-in-chief with a daily briefing on the war —
in essence, to control what they wrote. One journalist, a retired
army general, who attended the Monday session, recalled
Dayan's assessment: "The situation is desperate. Everything is
lost. We must withdraw." There was talk in a later meeting of
appeals to world Jewry, distribution of antitank weapons to
every citizen, and last-ditch resistance in the civilian popula-
tion centers. It was Israel's darkest hour, but no withdrawal
was ordered.

Instead, Israel called its first nuclear alert and began arming
its nuclear arsenal. And it used that alert to blackmail Washing-
ton into a major policy change.

17

Nuclear Blackmail

Moshe Dayan's fears and Israel's gloom were turned
around during a dramatic meeting on Monday, October 8, at
Golda Meir's office in Tel Aviv, just a few hundred feet from
"the Bor," the military's huge underground war complex.
Meir's closest aides, the so-called kitchen cabinet, assembled for
what turned out to be an all-night session. Among those in
attendance, besides Dayan and Meir, were General David
(Dado) Elazar, the army chief of staff; Yigal Allon, the deputy
prime minister; Brigadier General Yisrael (Gingy) Leor, the
prime minister's military aide; and Israel Galili, the influential
minister without portfolio and longtime confidant of Meir.

Over the next hours, the Israeli leadership — faced with its
greatest crisis — resolved to implement three critical decisions:
it would rally its collapsing forces for a major counterattack; it
would arm and target its nuclear arsenal in the event of total
collapse and subsequent need for the Samson Option; and, fi-
nally, it would inform Washington of its unprecedented nu-
clear action — and unprecedented peril — and demand that the
United States begin an emergency airlift of replacement arms
and ammunition needed to sustain an extended all-out war ef-
fort.

The kitchen cabinet agreed that the nuclear missile launch-
ers at Hirbat Zachariah, as many as were ready, would be made
operational, along with eight specially marked F-4S that were
on twenty-four-hour alert at Tel Nof, the air force base near
Rehovot. The initial target list included the Egyptian and Syr-
ian military headquarters near Cairo and Damascus. It could
not be learned how many weapons were armed, although
Dimona was known to have manufactured more than twenty

226 THE SAMSON OPTION

warheads by 1973. No weapons were targeted on the Soviet
Union, but there was little doubt that the Soviets would
quickly learn what was going on. Israeli intelligence was inter-
cepting indecipherable signals from what were presumed to be
Soviet operatives inside the country; the encoded messages
were beamed throughout the early morning.

All of the key players are now dead, and none left any record of
what took place. (In his daily diary, published in Hebrew, Gen-
eral Elazar blacked out the night of October 8 and recorded
only the following phrase: "Crucial meeting.") There is wide-
spread knowledge among the Israeli defense and political lead-
ership of what took place at the crucial meeting, but in
subsequent years those who were there — including stenogra-
phers and advisers — have never talked publicly about it.

The only significant objections came from within the nuclear
community, some of whose senior officials — but not Freier —
were said by an Israeli source to have accused the senior offi-
cials, in essence, of panicking. Their view was that the situa-
tion had not yet been reached for weapons of last resort, which
were then code-named, appropriately, the "Temple" weapons.

One former Israeli government official who was in the prime
minister's office that night depicted the chain-smoking Meir,
who slept very little during the early stages of the war, as con-
fused and concerned by Dayan's report of imminent collapse.
The basic decision to arm the weapons of last resort was
reached easily, he said; there were far more complicated discus-
sions of how many warheads to arm and where they were to be
targeted. There was a separate, preliminary briefing by techni-
cal experts from Dimona, led by Shalheveth Freier, who de-
scribed the weapons and targets that were available for
immediate assembly.

The senior official also described the fear that swept through
the prime minister's staff" when the arming of nuclear weapons
became known: "There were a few days there when it seemed
that the end of the world was near. For those of us who lived
through the Holocaust, we knew one thing — it will never hap-
pen again." The aide learned what happened from General
Leor, Meir's military assistant: "Gingy told me about the arm-

NUCLEAR BLACKMAIL 227

ing of the weapons. We were very intimate." The young gen-
eral, who later died of cancer, had a child on duty at the front
and was, as he told the aide, "scared to death."

One Israeli assumption was that the Soviets, who would
learn — as they had learned other secrets inside Israel in recent
years — of the nuclear arming, would then be compelled to urge
their allies in Egypt and Syria to limit their offensive and not
attempt to advance beyond the pre-1967 borders. And a Soviet
warning was given, according to Mohammed Heikal, editor of
Al-Abram, the leading Egyptian newspaper, and eminence grise to
Nasser and Sadat. In an interview, Heikal revealed that the
Soviet Union had told the senior leadership of Egypt early in
the war that the "Israelis had three warheads assembled and
ready." The information was given to General Mohammed
Abdel Ghany el-Gamasy, the Egyptian chief of staff, by a So-
viet intelligence officer who had worked closely with el-
Gamasy when he served earlier as chief of military intelligence.
The Soviet message also reported, Heikal recalled, that Moshe
Dayan had visited the front and returned to Tel Aviv "with a
scary report" that was presented to Golda Meir's equally
alarmed kitchen cabinet.

There was an equally important second purpose for the arm-
ing of nuclear weapons, according to former Israeli govern-
ment officials: such a drastic step would force the United States
to begin an immediate and massive resupply of the Israeli mili-
tary. There was widespread rage inside the Israeli cabinet at
the Nixon White House — aimed especially at Henry Kissinger
— over what was correctly perceived in Israel as an American
strategy of delaying the resupply in an attempt to let the Arabs
win some territory, and some self-respect, and thus set up the
possibility of serious land-for-peace bargaining. Kissinger,
just sworn in as secretary of state, would direct the negotia-
tions.

Kissinger made no secret of his initial strategy in the war, tell-
ing James R. Schlesinger, the secretary of defense, that his goal
was to "let Israel come out ahead, but bleed." Kissinger's goal
was defended by some of his fellow diplomats as business as

228 THE SAMSON OPTION

usual. "Trying to take advantage of the situation?" rhetorically
asked Nicholas Veliotes. "We always do this."

In the second volume of his memoirs, Years of Upheaval, Kis-
singer made no mention of a nuclear threat, but he did describe
a series of urgent telephone calls from Simcha Dinitz, the Is-
raeli ambassador to Washington, that began at 1:45 a.m. on Tues-
day, October 9 — just as the all-night meeting in Golda Meir's
office was breaking up (it was 8:45 a.m. in Israel). Dinitz focused
on one question, wrote Kissinger: "What could we do about
resupply?" The same question was asked again, in a second
telephone call, at 3:00 a.m. "Unless he wanted to prove to the
[Israeli] cabinet that he could get me out of bed at will," wrote
Kissinger, "something was wrong." Kissinger, accompanied by
Peter W. Rodman, his longtime assistant, and Dinitz, accompa-
nied by General Mordecai Gur, the Israeli military attache,
met at 8:20 a.m. in the Map Room of the White House, where
Kissinger was told of the desperate situation of the Israeli mili-
tary and the need for more tanks and aircraft. "Israel stood on
the threshold of a bitter war of attrition that it could not possi-
bly win given the disparity of manpower," Kissinger said. "It
had to do something decisive." At one point during the Map
Room meeting, Kissinger wrote, Dinitz insisted that he and
Kissinger needed to be alone. Rodman and Gur, who both
could be trusted with the most sensitive information, were dis-
missed. Once they were alone, Dinitz's message, according to
Kissinger, was merely that Golda Meir "was prepared to come
to the United States personally for an hour to plead with Presi-
dent Nixon for urgent arms aid. . . ." It was a request that
Kissinger could, and did, as he wrote, reject "out of hand and
without checking with Nixon. Such a proposal could reflect
only either hysteria or blackmail."

A more complete account of the Dinitz message would un-
doubtedly show that it was closer to blackmail, as Kissinger
knew, and it worked. "By the evening of October 9," Kissinger
said in his memoir, "Israel had been assured that its war losses
would be made up. Relying on this assurance, it stepped up its
consumption of war materiel, as we had intended."

How was Israel's warning of a potential Armageddon deliv-
ered to the United States? Neither Kissinger nor Dinitz could

NUCLEAR BLACKMAIL 229

be reached to discuss the subject, although Dinitz's insistence
on the one-on-one meeting with Kissinger — as well as Kis-
singer's description of the Dinitz message as "blackmail" —
seems obviously linked to the nuclear issue. Word of the Israeli
nuclear arming also came from the Soviets, according to a for-
mer IsraSeli intelligence official. The official said that Detachment
8200, the Israeli communications intelligence agency that had
picked up the Soviet warning to Cairo — as acknowledged by
Heikal — also intercepted on the morning of October 9 a Soviet
warning to Washington about the Israeli arming of nuclear
weapons. Asked why he thought the United States has never
publicly mentioned such a warning, the Israeli responded: "Who
in the U.S. is ready to admit that the Soviets were ahead?"

Kissinger has never talked publicly about the Israeli nuclear
arming, and his closest advisers at the time, including Rodman
and William G. Hyland, then handling Soviet affairs for the
National Security Council, said they knew of no such informa-
tion. The best source for what happened, nonetheless, is Kis-
singer himself, who privately acknowledged that there had
been an Israeli nuclear threat both to Anwar Sadat and to Her-
mann F. Eilts, the American ambassador to Egypt who worked
closely with Kissinger during the intense Middle East shuttle
diplomacy of the mid-1970s. 41

Eilts had been handpicked in October 1973 by Kissinger for
the assignment to Cairo, and he arrived there at the end of the
Yom Kippur War. His first detailed conversation with Kis-
singer about his new assignment couldn't have been more dra-
matic. It took took place, at Kissinger's request, at a hastily
arranged breakfast in early November in Islamabad, Pakistan,
where Kissinger had stopped overnight en route to a much-
delayed visit to China. "Henry spoke a lot about how on the
fourth day of the war [October 9] the Israelis panicked," Eilts
recalled, "and that's when the judgment was made to assist
them. At that point" — and in similar discussions with Kis-
singer over the next three years — "there was never a word
about nuclear arming." There was a final meeting in late 1976,

* Eilts, a career diplomat, retired in 1979 after spending six years as ambassador to
Egypt to become director of the Center for International Relations at Boston Univer-
sity.

230 THE SAMSON OPTION

at the end of the Ford administration — and the end of Kis-
singer's tenure as secretary of state — and Kissinger brought up
the 1973 war again. "And then, in a sort of casual reference,"
Eilts said, "Henry threw in that there was concern that the
Israelis might go nuclear. There had been intimations that if
they didn't get military equipment, and quickly, they might go
nuclear." Eilts recalled his surprise that "none of this had come
out earlier." He also was surprised at the casualness of Kis-
singer's attitude: "It was just sort of a passing comment."

Kissinger was far less casual at the time he learned of Israel's
intention. He told none of his colleagues in the cabinet about
the nuclear threat, of course, but changed his mind overnight
about the need to get military arms — in huge quantities — to
Israel. "Israel's [ammunition] consumption rate was gauged for
a seven-day war," recalled James Schlesinger — a reflection of
Washington's confidence in the fighting ability of Israel's army
and air force. "But Kissinger just turned around totally. He got
a little hysterical" in urging an immediate and massive resup-
ply. "Henry seemed to be more concerned than I was over the
possibility of a nuclear exchange" in the Middle East, Schle-
singer added. Kissinger's actions led some senior officials to
conclude that Israeli use of a nuclear weapon was not out of the
question. "From where we sat," Schlesinger said, "there was an
assumption that Israel had a few nukes and that if there was a
collapse, there was a possibility that Israel would use them."
William E. Colby, then director of the CIA, shared the assump-
tion: "We were afraid Israel might go for broke." It was be-
lieved, Colby added, that nuclear weapons would be used "only
in an extreme situation."

Kissinger referred to the Israeli nuclear threat in his first
extended private meeting in Cairo on November 7, 1973, with
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat; it was a precursor of Kis-
singer's famed Middle East shuttle diplomacy that would begin
the next year.* Sadat later briefed Mohammed Heikal about the

* During a tense moment in the shuttle diplomacy, Kissinger, in Israel, suddenly
declared to Golda Meir, according to an American eyewitness: "First, I am an Ameri-
can; second, I am the secretary of state of the United States of America; third, I am a
Jew." Meir replied without missing a beat: "That's all right, sonny, we read from right
to left."

NUCLEAR BLACKMAIL 231

off-the-record meeting and, according to Heikal, told of a se-
nior "American" — it could only have been Kissinger — who ex-
plained the sudden American airlift to Israel as a decision
aimed at avoiding a nuclear escalation. Sadat further quoted
Kissinger as saying, "It was serious, more serious than you can
imagine." Israel had at least three warheads and was preparing
to use them, Sadat told Heikal. (Kissinger apparently was rely-
ing on Carl Duckett's 1968 CIA estimate of Israeli warheads —
the only U.S. government estimate in existence in 1973 — that,
had placed the number of warheads at three or four.) The
Egyptian president, faithful to his promise of confidentiality to
Kissinger, never explicitly told Heikal where his information
came from, but Heikal had no doubt at the time or later: "The
only American with that kind of credibility, who would make
Sadat believe him [about the Israeli threat], was Henry Kis-
singer." Heikal subsequently wrote about the Kissinger com-
ment, without indicating that Sadat had been his source, in Al-
Ahram, saying that the Nixon administration had feared during
the fighting that the Israelis "might lose their nerve and use
one of the three bombs they had in order to repel the Arab
offensive."

Sometime in this period, the American intelligence community
got what apparently was its first look, via the KH-11, at the
completed and operational missile launchers hidden in the side
of a hill at Hirbat Zachariah. The launchers were left in the
open, perhaps deliberately, making it much easier for Ameri-
can photo interpreters to spot them. (The Soviets also had satel-
lite coverage in the Middle East, and presumably saw the same
missile field.) One U.S. official also recalled seeing hollowed-
out nuclear storage bunkers and huge blast doors, with railroad
tracks leading to a nearby mobile launching site.

By mid-October, the Israeli military had successfully counter-
attacked in the Golan Heights and the Sinai, ending any imme-
diate threat — and the necessity for the nuclear alert. The
weapons were removed from their forward positions by Octo-
ber 14. The Egyptians, however, bolstered by a renewed airlift
of Soviet arms that began on October 10, mounted a second

232 THE SAMSON OPTION

offensive in the Sinai, which eventually was offset by a brilliant
Israeli strike across the Suez Canal through a gap in the Egyp-
tian lines.

With Egypt suddenly on the defensive, Soviet Premier
Alexei N. Kosygin flew to Cairo on October 16 and persuaded
Sadat to call for a cease-fire. Kissinger flew to Moscow on Octo-
ber 20 and to Tel Aviv two days later, where he received Israeli
acquiesence for a cease-fire in place. In the meantime, the
Egyptian Third Army was in danger of being surrounded and
left essentially to the mercy of the Israeli Defense Force. The
Israelis continued their offensive in Egyptian territory, moving
north and west to a point within sixty miles of Cairo. The
continued encirclement of the Third Army led Soviet party
leader Leonid Brezhnev to increase the alert status of his air-
borne divisions and warn the White House that unless Israel
stopped violating the cease-fire, "we should be faced with the
necessity urgently to consider the question of taking appropri-
ate steps unilaterally." The implication seemed to be that
Brezhnev would send some of his troops as a blocking force
behind the front lines in Egypt to prevent the Israelis from
going on to Cairo.

The perceived threat came a few days after Nixon, more
deeply embattled than ever over the Watergate scandals, had
publicly fired Archibald Cox, the special Watergate prosecutor,
and accepted the resignation of Attorney General Elliot L.
Richardson and William D. Ruckelshaus, Richardson's deputy,
in what became known as the "Saturday Night Massacre." The
President earlier had been rocked by the indictment on corrup-
tion charges and subsequent resignation of Vice President
Spiro T. Agnew. Another complication was the publicly an-
nounced Arab boycott of oil sales to the United States and the
Arab decision to increase crude oil prices dramatically.

There is no evidence that the Soviets did, in fact, contem-
plate any significant deployment of their airborne troops, de-
spite their high alert status. Most scholars now agree that
Brezhnev's warning to the White House was aimed at forcing
Washington to urge the Israelis to adhere to the cease-fire. Kis-
singer did pressure the Israelis (there is no evidence that
Nixon, consumed by Watergate, played any significant role in

NUCLEAR BLACKMAIL 233

the issue) on the cease-fire, but at the same time he ordered the
82nd Airborne Division and the nuclear-armed B-52S of the
Strategic Air Command to go on alert. The aircraft carrier John
R Kennedy also was dispatched to the Mediterranean, and at
least fifty B-52S were redeployed from Guam to the United
States. The nation, still reeling from the continuing Watergate
revelations, was stunned — and distressed — by the White
House's unilateral action; there was widespread belief that the
alert had been ordered primarily for domestic political pur-
poses and not because the Soviets were ready to move into the
Middle East.*

Israel responded to the American alert by going on nuclear
alert for a second time in the Yom Kippur War, according to
Yuval Neeman, the physicist and nuclear expert who served in
later Israeli governments as minister of science and technology.

This time, the crisis resolved itself quickly, as Golda Meir
ordered her army to stop all offensive action against Egypt,
permitting a United Nations peacekeeping force to impose the
cease-fire. At this point, however, a small undercover U.S.
Navy intelligence unit, known as Task Force 157, operating in
the waters of the Bosporus off Turkey, relayed data to Washing-
ton suggesting that one of the Soviet ships leaving the Black
Sea en route to the Mediterranean was carrying radioactive
material. The report from the Navy swept through the Ameri-
can intelligence community and the White House. Over the
next few days, as the Soviets and many in Congress and the
American media accused Nixon and Kissinger of overreacting,

* Many of Kissinger's senior aides and others in the government, including William
Colby, defended the alert. Colby recalled that there had been a steady stream of intelli-
gence reports suggesting that the Soviet Union was preparing some of its most highly
trained paratroop units and its transport fleet for deployment to the Middle East. On
the night of the alert, he said, the American intelligence community "lost the transport
fleet. We were afraid it'd gone" to the Middle East with Soviet paratroopers. Another
senior NSC aide confirmed Colby's account and added: "I thought they were coming"
— a point of view, he added, that he successfully urged on Kissinger. The NSC aide
added that neither he nor Kissinger anticipated that word of the heightened alert
would become known so quickly. "We weren't trying to signal the Soviets," the aide
said. "We just didn't realize that the military would begin calling back privates and
corporals from leave" — making it impossible to keep the alert secret from the press.
Another equally senior American official, who had access to all of the available intelli-
gence, viewed the actions of both Washington and Moscow simply as "posturing. We
were publicly threatening to go [into the Sinai] ourselves and the Soviets were coun-
tering."

234 THE SAMSON OPTION

descriptions of the Soviet threat, including dramatic details of
its shipment of nuclear warheads into Egypt, began appearing
in the press.

The most complete account of the alleged Soviet escalation,
as seen from the White House, was published in Kissinger, a 1974
biography written by Marvin and Bernard Kalb, then corre-
spondents for CBS. Kissinger, the main source for the book,
was said on the morning after the alert to have been informed
by the CIA of u an alarming report from Egypt — that the Rus-
sians might have landed nuclear weapons there." American in-
telligence, the Kalbs wrote, "had kept track of a Soviet ship
carrying radioactive material and heading toward Port Said."
It was presumed, the authors wrote, that several Soviet nuclear
warheads had been provided to Egypt for deployment in Scud
missiles. "The report tended to harden Kissinger's judgment
that the Russians were going to send airborne troops to
Egypt," the Kalbs added. "Nuclear weapons could serve as
backup protection for a sizable Soviet force. On the other hand,
Kissinger could not dismiss the possibility that the Russians
were moving nuclear weapons into Egypt because they be-
lieved that the Israelis had nuclear weapons and intended to
use them against Egypt."

The only flaw in the Kissinger account, as told to the Kalbs,
is that it was not true. In fact, the Task Force 157 report had
been discounted almost immediately by the intelligence com-
munity. One high-ranking American officer, who was in
charge of a major intelligence agency at the time, said that
reconnaissance had established that the Soviets had loaded nu-
clear warheads on a cargo ship in a Black Sea port — but never
shipped them. "A different ship goes through," the officer ex-
plained, "and dumb little 157 flashes a message" that Soviet war-
heads were heading for the Mediterranean, and possibly Egypt.
"Everybody in the United States goes crazy, but it turns out to
be a totally false reading. It was a different ship" that moved
into the Black Sea. There was a direct approach to Soviet offi-
cials: "The Soviets said, 'We didn't send anything out.' " The
intelligence community concluded that there was no evidence
of a Soviet attempt to bring nuclear warheads into the battle

NUCLEAR BLACKMAIL 235

zone.* The evidence that did exist, in fact, as was not reported
at the time, or cited later by Kissinger in his memoirs, demon-
strated that the Soviets had ordered their destroyers and other
vessels in the Middle East to steam to the nearest ports and off-
load their nuclear weapons. There was a consensus among se-
nior intelligence officials in the Pentagon, recalled Patrick J.
Parker, then the deputy assistant secretary of defense for intel-
ligence, that "[t]he Soviets were understandably frightened of
the situation and eager to contain it."

Kissinger also made no mention of the alleged Soviet war-
head shipment in the second volume of his memoirs, nor has he
— or any American official — revealed that Israel issued two nu-
clear alerts during the crisis. He did emerge, however, from the
October crisis with renewed official concern about Dimona.
Some weeks afterward, Kissinger asked the CIA for a formal
National Intelligence Estimate on the Israeli nuclear program;
the paper, which concluded that Israel had at least ten nuclear
warheads, took Carl Duckett's Office of Science and Technol-
ogy months to prepare and then was submitted only to the
White House.**

The Israeli government concluded by the end of the war that
the American intelligence community had somehow learned —

* A former member of Task Force 157 acknowledged that there was no way that the
unit on duty in Turkey, whose function was to photograph and monitor all Soviet ship
deployments from the Black Sea, could independently establish the bona fides of its
reports. The unit, he explained, was manned by specially recruited Turkish citizens
who were not competent to make on-the-spot assessments, but instead relayed their
tapes and other data by commercial aircraft to Washington for analysis. The conclusion
that there were warheads aboard the Soviet cargo ship came from a Navy laboratory in
Washington, the former 157 member said, and not from Turkey. "We never had any
knowledge at all [in the field] whether anything was hot or not," he added.

** Another as yet unresolved question about the Yom Kippur War revolves around
the question of nuclear deterrence: did Egypt and Syria limit their initial operations in
fear of a nuclear response if they penetrated too deeply? Mohammed Heikal, for exam-
ple, insisted that the Soviet reports about the Israeli nuclear arming — while taken very
seriously — had no impact on the overall Egyptian military operation. Egypt's military
goals, he said, had been sharply limited from the outset. There is clear evidence that
Syria also set very limited goals for its military, for its army came to a literal stop —
with no opposition in front of it — more than a day before Golda Meir's kitchen cabinet
met in Tel Aviv to authorize the nuclear arming. The best guess at this point is that
Syrian and Egyptian planners certainly were aware that any deep penetration inside
the pre-1967 borders would have occasioned a massive, and perhaps nuclear, counterat-
tack — but the fact that no such advance was planned or sought had much more to do
with the myth of Israeli military invincibility than with a specific concern about the
weapons at Dimona.

236 THE SAMSON OPTION

independently of what the Soviets or Ambassador Dinitz had
revealed — of the arming of the Israeli warheads. "Somehow,
and this I know for sure," a former member of Golda Meir's
personal staff said, "the Americans found out about it and Mos-
sad did an investigation as to how the U.S. found out. Golda
asked Mossad to investigate how much damage it caused."
There was another aspect to the inquiry, the Israeli added,
based on Israel's understanding that American intelligence had
discovered Soviet warheads being moved through the Black
Sea: "Was there a threat? How much did they [the United
States] tell us? What did the U.S. know and when did they tell
us?"

The results of the Mossad inquiry could not be learned, but
Golda Meir's concern about America's ability to penetrate
Israel seemed to diminish as Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy got
under way. There was one tantalizing public reference, how-
ever, published with little fanfare seven years later, suggesting
that the United States had known independently of the nuclear
alert as it took place. On March 10, 1980, journalist Jack Ander-
son's syndicated daily column — largely about the American oil
industry's influence inside the Department of Energy — in-
cluded a four-paragraph addendum entitled "Close Call." The
filler item said in part: "Locked in secret Pentagon files is star-
tling evidence that Israel maneuvered dangerously near the
edge of nuclear war after the 1973 Arab assault. The secret doc-
uments claim that Israel came within hours of running out of
essential arms. 'At this crucial moment, the possibility of nu-
clear arms was discussed with the U.S.,' declares one report.
American authorities feared the Israelis might resort to nuclear
weapons to assure their survival. This was the most compelling
reason, according to the secret papers, that the United States
rushed conventional weapons to Israel."

Further evidence of the Israeli willingness to use nuclear weap-
ons in the 1973 war — or to threaten their use — was provided at a
meeting early the next year between David Elazar and Lieuten-
ant General Orwin C. Talbott, deputy commander of the U.S.
Army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC). Talbott
was on an extended visit to Israel to discuss some of the lessons

NUCLEAR BLACKMAIL 237

learned in the 1973 war an d to inspect captured Arab and Soviet
military equipment; there was considerable contact with
Elazar, still the Israeli chief of staff. At one meeting, Talbott
recalled, Elazar suddenly began talking "out of the blue" about
Israel's threat to use nuclear weapons in the desperate mo-
ments of the 1973 war: "My impression at the time was that he
was trying through me to let Washington know how serious
the situation was — approaching the point where they were
ready to use them [nuclear weapons]." Talbott understood the
significance of the information and quickly filed a top-secret
one-page memorandum for General Creighton W. Abrams, the
Army chief of staff. "I made no copies of it and gave it to
nobody else," the general, now retired, said. "I figured this was
not discussable information at that time. I assumed Dado was
trying to get a message to us."*

General Talbott had done his part, but his report to Creigh-
ton Abrams went nowhere. Carl Duckett, who at the time had
direct responsibility for the CIA's intelligence on the Israeli
nuclear arsenal, first learned of the Talbott message from the
author; he also said he had never been informed of any intelli-
gence suggesting that Israel had gone on two nuclear alerts
during the Yom Kippur War.

The disconnect when it came to a nuclear-armed Israel was
near-total: a CIA official assigned to Israel also had direct
knowledge of the nuclear alert and did not tell his superiors
what he knew, just as Henry Kissinger had told no one. The
CIA official was an expert in communications intelligence and
spent three years in Israel in the early 1970s as an undercover
liaison officer with Detachment 8200; one of his assignments
was to help the Israelis monitor the sophisticated Soviet radar
and communications gear that had been supplied to the Egyp-
tians during the War of Attrition. Israel also was operating,
with the aid of equipment leased from the National Security
Agency, at least three supersecret listening posts capable of

* Talbott was accompanied during the meeting with Elazar by Colonel Bruce Wil-
liams, the U.S. Army attache in Israel. Williams similarly remembered Elazar's re-
marks as revelatory: "I can't recall the exact words," he said, "but the message was
clear: Israel was prepared to use nuclear weapons against the Syrians if they'd broken
through."

238 THE SAMSON OPTION

intercepting communications throughout the Middle East and
as far north as southern Russia.* The intercepted intelligence
was shared with the United States, and the American under-
cover operative was able to learn a great deal about the opera-
tions of the Israeli signals intelligence community.

After the war, the official prepared a highly classified report
on some of the Israeli deception techniques that had been suc-
cessfully used for, among other things, relaying bogus orders to
Egyptian and Syrian forces. "I wrote a small report for Jessup"
— Peter Jessup had returned for a second tour as CIA station
chief in the early 1970s — "but I knew the Israelis would pick it
up out of Washington if it was filed. So I was very careful in
what I said. I did not mention that the conversations [with his
Israeli counterparts] got to nuclear threats. I knew that the
weapons available were something to be reckoned with, and
they [the Israelis] told me that this had been communicated to
the Egyptians. They said, 'We've developed this method of
communication with each other.' "

The CIA official was rotated back to Washington after the
1973 war and was summoned by James Angleton, the counter-
intelligence head, who was still handling Israeli affairs. An-
gleton had seen his report on Israeli deception techniques and
wanted a special debriefing. It was a bizarre experience, the
CIA official recalled: "I went through two days of debriefing by
one of Angleton's guys with Angleton sitting outside the room
at a secretary's desk." It was clear that the room was wired so
that Angleton could monitor the conversation. The aide would
occasionally leave the room to check a fact or line of query with
Angleton, who never made an appearance, and whose presence
was limited to an occasional scraping of his chair.

"I did not talk about the nuclear issue," the CIA official ac-
knowledged. "And I did not put it into any messages. I felt it
was something that other people knew about — and nobody
wanted to hear it from me."

* One of the joint sites, at Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights, was overrun by
Syria in the first day of the war. Within fifteen minutes, according to former Israeli
intelligence officers, Soviet helicopters had arrived and began dismantling the equip-
ment. It was a stunning loss: there were as many as seven underground levels full of
most sensitive listening and recording gear — all of which ended up in Soviet posses-
sion. Israel reclaimed the destroyed facility by war's end.

NUCLEAR BLACKMAIL 239

The Israeli and American governments returned to the pol-
icy of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. In June 1974,
however, Anwar Sadat announced that his country had ob-
tained intelligence indicating that Israel had developed tactical
nuclear weapons. A week later, Shimon Peres, defense minister
in a new Israeli government headed by Yitzhak Rabin, categor-
ically denied the existence of any such weapons and accused
Sadat of "gathering information of his own making." The
squabble between the two countries was treated perfunctorily
by the press and provoked no concern from President Gerald
R. Ford or his senior aides. A National Security Council official
did broach the issue, very gently, with an Israeli diplomat over
lunch more than a year later. "I told him I thought my people
had the perception that Israel had nuclear weapons," the aide
reported in a subsequent internal memorandum. The Israeli
diplomat denied the existence of any Israeli bomb and seemed
to be "visibly disturbed. . . . He was not pleased with the
course of the conversation, and switched the subject to music
and the arts, where it remained."

Carl Duckett made a career-ending mistake in March 1976: he
talked openly about Israel's nuclear weapons. On March 11,
1976, Duckett was one of a group of CIA officials who partici-
pated in an informal seminar before a group of local members
of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Such sessions, held at an auditorium near the CIA's main head-
quarters building at McLean, Virginia, were standard Wash-
ington fare; any remarks were understood to be limited to
unclassified materials. During a question-and-answer session,
Duckett was asked about Israel's nuclear capability and replied
without hesitation that Israel was estimated to have ten to
twenty nuclear weapons "available for use." Within days, an
account of his remarks was published in the Washington Post,
forcing George Bush, the newly installed CIA director, to issue
a public statement assuming "full responsibility" for the disclo-
sure of the secret information. The obviously angry Bush
added that he was "determined it will not happen again."
Duckett was rumored to have been drinking at the time of his
appearance — the assumption seemed to be that only someone

240 THE SAMSON OPTION

drunk would be so reckless as to discuss Israel's nuclear weap-
onry in public — and his subsequent request for retirement was
accepted by Bush.

Duckett, discussing those events years later, acknowledged
that the rumors of his heavy drinking "led to a discussion with
Bush and my decision to leave." The real issue, however, he
insisted, was not his drinking but Bush's unwillingness to pro-
mote him to deputy CIA director.

There was one enduring legacy: the CIA would continue to
know very little about the Israeli nuclear arsenal. Duckett's
1974 estimate giving Israel ten to twenty nuclear weapons
would remain the official American intelligence estimate until
the early 1980s — years in which Israel was exponentially in-
creasing its nuclear warhead stockpile. Duckett acknowledged
that there was no specific intelligence behind the estimate. "We
were trying to think what their targets would be," he ex-
plained, and using that information to predict the number of
warheads that would be manufactured. "We were speculating,"
he said of his staff. "Our guess was that the Israelis would not
have a reason for building more bombs [than ten to twenty] —
and that's why our numbers stayed fairly fixed. It was based on
very little."

18

Injustice

Carl Duckett's top-secret CIA estimate in 1968 that
Israel had three or four nuclear bombs was primarily based on
his conviction that an American Jew named Zalman Shapiro
had smuggled more than two hundred pounds of enriched ura-
nium into Israel — enough for four bombs. The alleged smug-
gled uranium also was a major factor in Duckett's second
estimate, in 1974, that credited Israel with at least ten bombs; it
was based on the amount of uranium he believed Shapiro had
diverted plus a guess that the technicians at Dimona could have
chemically separated enough plutonium from the reactor to
have produced six weapons or more since 1970. Just how Israel
would accomplish that feat without a chemical reprocessing
plant — the CIA still had no proof that such a plant existed in
Israel — was not clear, but what was clear was Shapiro's culpa-
bility. To Duckett and his colleagues, especially Richard
Helms, the case against Shapiro was unassailable.

In the CIA's view, Shapiro was more than just a Jew who
supported Israel; he was a Jew in the nuclear-fuel-processing
business who traveled regularly to Israel and was a partner
with the Israeli government in some business ventures. He fit
the dual-loyalty stereotype in many other ways: he was the
high-achieving son of an Orthodox rabbi who emigrated from
Lithuania; he was valedictorian of his high school class in Pas-
saic, New Jersey, before attending Johns Hopkins University;
he got a master's degree while going to night school; and — with
the aid of a fellowship from Standard Oil of Indiana — he
earned his doctorate in chemistry in 1948, at the age of twenty-
eight. Shapiro, with his brilliance and capacity for hard work,
was among the first scientists — and most certainly one of the

242 THE SAMSON OPTION

first Jews — to be hired to develop submarine reactors for a
newly established laboratory operated by the Westinghouse
Electric Corporation for the U.S. Navy.

As his career progressed, Shapiro — who underwent rigorous
national security checks while at Westinghouse — made no se-
cret of his strong commitment to Israel; some of his family had
been victims of the Nazis, and he believed in the need for an
independent Jewish state. He became an active member of the
Zionist Organization of America and also generously sup-
ported the American Technion Society, which raises funds and
provides equipment to the Technion-Israel Institute of Tech-
nology in Haifa, Israel's most advanced school of science and
engineering.

In 1957, he organized a publicly owned nuclear fuel process-
ing firm, with at least twenty-five stockholders, in an aban-
doned World War II steel plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania,
twenty-five miles northeast of Pittsburgh. The firm, known as
the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC),
was a small company in a nuclear-fuel-processing world that
was dominated by Fortune 500 firms; there was a constant
struggle to get contracts. Shapiro was aggressive in the pursuit
of work for his young company, and by the early 1960s
NUMEC was providing nuclear services for at least nine for-
eign countries. There was a steady stream of foreign visitors to
the factory, many at the instigation of the Department of Com-
merce and the State Department, which were eager to show off
the government's Atoms for Peace effort. There were at least
three foreign employees at NUMEC, including an Israeli met-
allurgist assigned to unclassified breeder reactor fuel research.
There also was constant back-and-forth in those years between
AEC security officials and NUMEC over the handling of classi-
fied materials, and the company was required to improve its
procedures.

In 1965, after years of internal audits and reviews, an AEC
inspection team determined that more than two hundred
pounds of enriched uranium that had been supplied by West-
inghouse and the Navy to NUMEC for processing and fabrica-
tion could not be accounted for; eventually the Joint Atomic

INJUSTICE 243

Energy Committee — as well as the CIA — came to suspect that
Shapiro had diverted the uranium to Israel.

Shapiro would be hounded by those suspicions for the next
twenty-five years — although the most significant evidence
against him seemed to be his Jewishness and the fact that one of
the major investors in NUMEC shared his support for Israel. A
number of experienced investigators from the government and
the Congress, as well as dozens of journalists, assumed that
Shapiro's emotional tie to Israel was enough of a motive for
him to commit nuclear espionage, a crime punishable by death
under the Atomic Energy Act.

Despite more than ten years of intensive investigation in-
volving active FBI surveillance, however, no significant evi-
dence proving that Shapiro had diverted any uranium from his
plant was ever found. Nonetheless, he remained guilty in the
minds of many in the government and the press; reporters in-
variably included an account of Shapiro's ties to Israel and the
alleged NUMEC diversion in any story about the development
of nuclear arms in Israel. Some of the newspaper and book
accounts did note that the charges against Shapiro were never
proved; many others simply declared that it was the Shapiro
uranium that gave Israel the nuclear bomb.

Zalman Shapiro did not divert uranium from his processing
plant to Israel, but there is little solace for the nuclear industry
in that fact: the missing uranium was not stolen at all — it ended
up in the air and water of the city of Apollo as well as in the
ducts, tubes, and floors of the NUMEC plant. There is little
solace, too, for the American intelligence community in
Shapiro's noninvolvement with nuclear diversion, for it failed
to learn of Shapiro's close ties to Ernst David Bergmann and
Binyamin Blumberg and the sensitive — and legitimate — mis-
sion he did conduct for his beloved Israel.

Shapiro's business was not a pretty one: many of NUMEC's
contracts involved the chemical isolation and recovery of en-
riched uranium from the dirt and scrap generated in
fabricating nuclear fuel. The scrap was chemically treated —
sometimes two or three times — in an attempt to isolate the
salvageable uranium. The process inherently generated some

244 THE SAMSON OPTION

loss; small amounts of enriched uranium were constantly being
flushed out in waste water or lodged in scrub brushes, air
vents, filtration systems, cleaning pads, and air masks. It was
the kind of work NUMEC's larger and more solidly financed
competitors did not want. Other NUMEC contracts involved
cleaner work, such the conversion of highly enriched uranium
(93 percent U-235) from gaseous uranium hexafluoride — the
form in which it was shipped from the government's huge ura-
nium diffusion plants — into uranium oxide powder capable of
being fabricated into nuclear fuel for Navy reactors. That pro-
cess, too, created waste — as much as 10 to 15 percent of the ura-
nium eventually ended up as scrap and needed to be recovered.
Since working with weapons-grade material was exceedingly
dangerous, NUMEC had to divide the uranium being pro-
cessed into small lots — creating more opportunity for waste —
to guard against the horrible possibility of setting off a chain
reaction. Under the stringent AEC rules governing the
reprocessing of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium,
Shapiro's firm was responsible and had to pay enormous penal-
ties for any enriched materials that could not be accounted for
— as much as $10 a gram; each missing pound thus meant a loss
of more than $4,500.

The term MUF, for "material unaccounted for," became a
common one in the nuclear processing industry. Making the
contractors pay for missing materials also was the backbone of
the AEC's safeguards program; the assumption was that no
reprocessing firm would divert or steal uranium if it resulted in
a stiff fine.

The AEC eventually worked out complicated rules for ac-
counting for MUF that enabled private firms such as NUMEC
to estimate in their regular reports how much missing but ac-
countable uranium was believed to be in a plant's air filtration
system or buried in its waste pits. NUMEC would routinely
report seemingly huge losses of enriched materials on any
given contract — thirty or forty pounds was not unusual — and
then estimate that 80 percent or more of the lost materials
would be recovered upon cleanup. The AEC accepted such es-
timates as realistic, and deferred the assessments of any penal-
ties.

INJUSTICE 245

The fact that nuclear waste was considered an inevitable by-
product of the business, just as sawmills produce sawdust, was
not really a secret — it was just one of those facts that the public
did not need to know, and especially so as the nation became
increasingly sensitized to the environmental costs of the nu-
clear industry. The enriched materials handled by the workers
at NUMEC were not "hot," as commonly understood, for they
had not yet been irradiated in a reactor and thus did not emit
penetrating and lethal radiation. The danger facing the
NUMEC employees came from breathing in or otherwise in-
gesting uranium, which, like all heavy metals, accumulates in
bones, where it eventually impacts on bone marrow, causing
leukemia. Enriched uranium, if breathed into the lungs, also
could trigger lung cancer, and the NUMEC employees were
constantly urged to wear face masks, although many refused to
do so in the summer.

Zalman Shapiro's career-destroying problems began in 1962,
when he was the low bidder for two complicated Westinghouse
contracts, involving the processing of more than 2,500 pounds
of enriched uranium. NUMEC was assured by Westinghouse
that 60 percent or more of each hundred kilograms of uranium
could successfully be processed — meaning that as much as 40
percent of the uranium would be scrap, to be separately recov-
ered. In fact, NUMEC found that the process was far more
difficult than Westinghouse had claimed for one of the con-
tracts, and resulted in only a 35 percent yield of acceptable
product. Nearly two thirds of the Westinghouse-supplied ura-
nium ended up as scrap, much of it — so Shapiro and his associ-
ates thought — eventually buried in barrels, along with
contaminated rags and other cleaning equipment, in two huge
waste pits on the NUMEC grounds. The pits included contam-
inated waste not only from the Westinghouse contract but from
other processing jobs for private companies; Shapiro had not
isolated the scrap from each of his contracts, as the AEC de-
manded. AEC investigators subsequently became convinced
that Shapiro had deliberately commingled the scrap from dif-
ferent contracts as a money-saving bookkeeping measure. Sha-
piro also angered the AEC by his reluctance — again for
pocketbook reasons — to begin the time-consuming job of

246 THE SAMSON OPTION

reprocessing the scrap to extract the missing uranium; he in-
stead kept his employees at work on new processing contracts,
for which there would be immediate payment. Stalling the
AEC inspection teams, which were demanding that the miss-
ing uranium be accounted for, one way or another, became a
way of life at NUMEC.

The AEC tried to resolve the complicated mess in a series of
extensive negotiations in 1964 and 1965, with Shapiro constantly
citing NUMEC's precarious financial condition to justify his
actions. Portions of the 1963 waste pit eventually were dug up,
and AEC inspectors found that the amount of enriched ura-
nium buried there was not nearly enough to match the huge
losses. The inspectors concluded that there was a MUF of 93.8
kilograms (206 pounds) of enriched uranium; they also told
headquarters that because of NUMEC's "inadequate and in-
complete accounting records," a diversion could not be ruled
out, although there was "no evidence" that a diversion had
taken place. The issue was aired at a special meeting in Febru-
ary 1966 of the AEC commissioners and senior staff, and, ac-
cording to a declassified transcript of that meeting, the
commissioners agreed that NUMEC's employees be inter-
viewed to find out what had happened. It was further agreed
that a trip would have to be taken to Capitol Hill to inform the
Joint Atomic Energy Committee of the loss.

The report to Congress was a bombshell. The American nu-
clear community already had been rocked in October 1964
upon learning that China's first nuclear bomb had been trig-
gered by uranium, and not plutonium, as the CIA and other
intelligence agencies had widely anticipated. There was imme-
diate suspicion that China had somehow bought on the black
market — or stolen — the enriched uranium for its bomb (the
CIA would not learn for another year or so that China had
completed a huge diffusion plant much earlier than expected).
A special study into AEC safeguards was commissioned, and it
questioned the commission's heavy reliance on financial penal-
ties as a sufficient bar against nuclear diversion. The Joint
Committee's report noted that the AEC's position seemed to be

INJUSTICE 247

that all of its responsibility "had been fulfilled ... as long as
material was paid for."

The AEC, sensitive to the diversion issue, had referred the
NUMEC losses to the FBI in October 1965, but the FBI saw no
basis for an investigation; its senior counterintelligence officials
concluded, according to declassified documents, that "this situ-
ation up to now has been rightfully treated by AEC as an ad-
ministration matter and there appears to be no basis for us to
take any action. . . ." An AEC inspection team eventually in-
terviewed more than 120 employees at NUMEC. No evidence
of a diversion was established.

The CIA, nonetheless, found Shapiro's long-standing ties to
Israel to be of continuing interest. Shapiro was a frequent visi-
tor to Israel, and Israelis were among the many foreign visitors
who had registered for tours of NUMEC. Shapiro also was a
partner with the Israeli government in a business involving the
pasteurization of food and the sterilization of medical supplies
by irradiation; packages to and from NUMEC were being
shipped out of and into Israel. By late 1966, although reports of
Israel's progress in nuclear weaponry began to flow from the
American embassy in Tel Aviv, John Hadden, the CIA station
chief, was still unable to find proof that Israel had a chemical
reprocessing plant at Dimona. And without such a plant, Israel
would have needed an independent source of enriched ura-
nium or plutonium to manufacture the bombs that, so Had-
den's informants told him, existed.

Duckett and Helms shared Hadden's view that Shapiro had
to have been the source for the Israeli progress in nuclear
weaponry; the two men would spend the next few years push-
ing their suspicions on anybody — including Presidents John-
son and Nixon — who would listen. They were mesmerized by
Shapiro's links to Israel and the fact that one of the initial
stockholders in NUMEC, David Lowenthal, had helped bring
illegal immigrants into Israel before 1948. Duckett even came to
believe, as he later told congressional investigators, that
NUMEC had been set up in 1957 by Shapiro as part of a long-
range Israeli intelligence scheme to divert uranium. Duckett
and Helms were supported in most of their suspicions by

248 THE SAMSON OPTION

George F. Murphy, assistant staff director of the Joint Atomic
Energy Committee, who also was convinced that the two hun-
dred pounds of enriched uranium could not simply have disap-
peared into NUMEC's refuse pits and air ducts. Murphy, who
had no technical understanding of the nuclear fuel cycle, found
Shapiro's alleged sloppy bookkeeping, as reported by the AEC,
to be preposterous: in his view, "Shapiro was the sharpest,
hardest-headed businessman I've ever known." Murphy also
was appalled by what he considered to be a lack of security at
NUMEC and told a congressional investigator of seeing ura-
nium pellets scattered "all over the benches" during a visit to
the Apollo plant. The possibility of a diversion to Israel seemed
solid, and Shapiro was put under FBI surveillance in the late
1960s.

Shapiro, meanwhile, in a desperate effort to save his com-
pany, hired James E. Lovett, a senior AEC scientist, to take
over nuclear materials accountability at NUMEC. One of
Lovett's first acts was to insist that the concrete floor of the old
plant be protected with stainless steel; concrete, Lovett knew,
absorbed far more uranium than suspected. Shapiro and other
company officials "were deluding themselves," Lovett recalled.
"They honestly thought that if it came down to the end, they'd
recover most" of the two hundred or more pounds of missing
uranium in NUMEC's waste pits. But most of the uranium
was not in the plant's waste pits; it was embedded in the con-
crete floor, clinging to ventilation ducts, flushed out with other
plant wastes into the local waterways, and scattered in the air.

The continuing controversy over the alleged diversion be-
came widely known inside the tight-knit nuclear community,
and Shapiro suffered. "I was a smelly dead fish," he bitterly
recalled. "Contracts were pulled away and given to others." In
1967, Shapiro and his partners were forced to merge their inter-
est in NUMEC into the Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO);
Shapiro, with his special Qjrlearance (for atomic energy mat-
ters) still intact, continued to run the plant.

Shapiro, as the CIA and AEC never learned, did have a secret
life. He had met and befriended many of Israel's senior nuclear
scientists on his visits there, and was especially devoted to
Ernst David Bergmann, who was head of Israel's Atomic En-

INJUSTICE 249

ergy Commission until 1966. "He was a genius," Shapiro said of
Bergmann. "He was a genius's genius. He worked night and
day. I don't know when he slept." Bergmann was especially
interested in a nuclear-powered water desalinization plant,
Shapiro said.

Water, of course, was the most precious of commodities in
Israel. In 1964, the country completed a 150-mile conduit,
known as the National Water Carrier, to bring water from the
north to the Negev. The system, then Israel's largest develop-
ment project, linked local and regional water conduits to form
an integrated network that sought to capture all of the nation's
rainfall and channel it into reservoirs. The National Water Car-
rier was not completed, however, without a series of disputes
with Syria, especially over Israel's goal of bringing water south
from Lake Kinneret in Galilee. There were huge stretches in
northern Israel where water being moved to the south was in
the open, protected only by fencing; the waterway was an obvi-
ous target for terrorists. El Fatah, the Arab guerrilla group
(and later an important member of the Palestine Liberation
Organization), boasted that it would poison the water. At one
point, Israeli security officials suspected that El Fatah had at-
tempted to cut the fence protecting the water works in what
was feared to be an effort to plant a bomb.

It was at this point that Zalman Shapiro was asked by Israel
to devise a rapid and accurate method of determining whether
water had been contaminated with toxic materials. There was a
second problem: as much as 30 percent of the water was disap-
pearing while traveling to the south, and Israeli officials were
unable to determine where and how the loss was taking place.
Shapiro acknowledged, reluctantly, that he also advised on that
issue, eventually recommending that a radioactive tracer be
added to the water in Lake Kinneret to monitor the flow. He
had decided not to discuss specifically all of his activities on
behalf of Israel during the many government and congressional
investigations into NUMEC, he said, because of the continued
threat to the Israeli water supply: "I didn't want to put any
ideas into people's minds."

In the late 1960s, Shapiro convened a series of meetings —
some in his home — of American scientists and Israelis to dis-

250 THE SAMSON OPTION

cuss, he said, the issue of how to protect the National Water
Carrier from potential terrorists. Some of the sessions, consid-
ered prima facie suspect by Duckett and his colleagues, were
monitored by the FBI. At the time, NUMEC was under con-
tract to provide to Israel specialized small power sources,
whose function Shapiro refused to spell out, other than to ac-
knowledge that they were linked to the security of the water-
ways. All of the items shipped were approved by the
Commerce Department for export, he said. "We had permits
for what we did. I never transmitted any documents to any-
body," he insisted. "The meetings pertained only to the water
supply."

Shapiro would not say whether he knew — as did many
American scientists — of the work being done at Dimona. He
did acknowledge an acquaintanceship with Binyamin Blum-
berg, the director of Israel's Science Liaison Bureau: "I never
said I didn't know him." But he denied revealing any American
secrets or diverting any materials. "I worked my butt off to
assure the security of this country — do you think for a moment
I'd do anything to impair its security?"

Duckett and Helms remained convinced that Shapiro was
guilty of espionage. Duckett's conversation with Edward
Teller and his early-1968 estimate of Israeli nuclear capacity led
Helms to urge the FBI to renew its investigation into Shapiro's
dealings with Israel. The FBI's J. Edgar Hoover was then in
the midst of a bitter dispute with James Angleton's counter-
intelligence shop over the CIA's handling of defectors, as well
as the continuing — and illegal — CIA spying inside the United
States under a presidential mandate to determine whether the
anti-Vietnam War movement was being directed by Moscow.
Hoover chose to spar with Helms over the Shapiro issue for the
next year, according to a former congressional investigator
who has reviewed the Senate and House intelligence commit-
tees' files on Shapiro. "The CIA was saying to Hoover," the
investigator recalled, " 'You're responsible for counterintel-
ligence in America. Investigate Shapiro, and if he's a spy, catch
him.' Hoover's answer was, 'We don't really know if any thing's
been taken. Go to Israel and get inside Dimona, and if you find

INJUSTICE 251

it [evidence of the Shapiro uranium], let us know.' It was kind
of a game," the investigator added. "The memos were hysteri-
cal — they went back and forth."

The NUMEC file remained buried, with Shapiro again work-
ing for Westinghouse, until 1975, when James H. Conran, an
analyst in the Nuclear Regulation Commission (NRC), one of
two new agencies that had been formed when the AEC was
dissolved earlier in the year, was assigned to write a history of
nuclear safeguards. He was denied access to the NUMEC file
on grounds of security, and began a fervid campaign to get a
briefing on NUMEC for the five NRC commissioners and their
immediate staffs. He could not write his report, he said, unless
he got that file.

There was another significant issue at stake: the nuclear
power industry was pushing hard to get public and govern-
ment support for a huge plutonium recycling industry. It
seemed as if the future of nuclear power now depended on
public acceptance of fast breeder reactors capable of generating
more plutonium fuel than they consumed. The public policy
issue was obvious: how could the world's governments prevent
the diversion of plutonium for military use? Bringing up the
NUMEC issue once again created a very much unwanted di-
lemma: either there had been a diversion, or the inherent loss
of plutonium and uranium at processing facilities such as
NUMEC — and there were many scattered across the nation —
was far higher than publicly understood.

The advocates of nuclear power, who included many in the
NRC, shuddered at the prospect of more adverse publicity
about nuclear reactor safety and possible widespread contami-
nation. Antinuclear groups were being organized around the
world and had begun large, and sometimes violent, demonstra-
tions in an effort to halt nuclear power.

Conran's insistence on determining what had happened to
the missing uranium at NUMEC won him few friends, there-
fore, inside the NRC. A high-level briefing by Carl Duckett
was arranged to discuss the possibility of a diversion. Victor
Gilinsky, then an NRC commissioner, recalled Duckett's pre-
sentation as matter-of-fact: "Basically, Duckett was asked

252 THE SAMSON OPTION

[about an Israeli bomb] and said the CIA thought Israel had
nuclear weapons and the Agency thought there was a diver-
sion. He didn't say anything that would convince you that was
the case — but the issue from our point, our little world, is that
he said what he did. We [the NRC commissioners] did not have
responsibility for dealing with the Israelis — we take what other
agencies think as a starting point." Gilinsky's contention was
that the NRC had no obligation to determine whether Duck-
ett' s assertions were correct, but it agreed on the basis of what
Duckett said to tighten up procedures for dealing with nuclear
materials. Most of those at the Duckett briefing "were not in-
volved in foreign affairs," Gilinsky noted. "They were protect-
ing the notion that the NRC's procedures were adequate to
protect plutonium. It was a threat to our claims that you could
protect the stuff."

Duckett's briefing to the NRC and his subsequent informal
talk at the CIA before the American Institute of Aeronautics
and Astronautics Association, while ruinous to his career, did
provoke another brief flurry of concern over NUMEC at the
Ford White House — yet another investigation of Shapiro was
initiated. Once again, however, the FBI could find no evidence
of a diversion.

There was independent evidence, moreover, demonstrating
that Shapiro's problems in operating NUMEC were not as ex-
ceptional as the AEC had publicly indicated in the mid-1960s. A
continuing NRC investigation of the plant, which had been
taken over in the early 1970s by Babcock & Wilcox, one of the
nation's major reactor designers, concluded that another 198
pounds of enriched uranium was missing over a twenty-nine-
month period beginning in April 1974. Further study showed
that more than no pounds could be accounted for by what the
NRC study called previously "unidentified and undocumented
loss mechanisms" — such as the contamination of workers'
clothing, losses from scrubber systems, material embedded in
the flooring, and residual deposits in the processing equipment.
The remaining lost uranium was attributed to "inevitable un-
certainties in the measurement system and errors in the ac-
counting system." In other words, uranium loss is hard to
measure. The high volume of lost uranium raised obvious pol-

INJUSTICE 253

lution questions for the immediate area; the Apollo facility had
been discharging an average of 13,300 gallons of water and waste
effluents daily into the nearby Kiskiminetas River, a tributary
of the Allegheny River, which is the main source of drinking
water for several communities in the Pittsburgh area.*

In October 1977, Jody Powell, President Jimmy Carter's press
secretary, publicly announced that "four years of continuing
investigation" by the AEC, FBI, and General Accounting Of-
fice had "failed to reveal" a diversion of uranium to Israel. By
the end of the year the NUMEC case was being actively pur-
sued by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investiga-
tions, one of the most competent and aggressive investigative
units in the Congress, as well as the House Subcommittee on
Energy and the Environment. Carl Duckett and John Hadden,
both retired from the CIA, cooperated fully with the subcom-
mittees; at one point, Duckett telephoned an investigator in the
middle of the night and insisted that he go to a pay telephone at
a gas station to return the call. He then urged that the investi-
gation into Shapiro be carried forward. Hadden, meanwhile,
was repeatedly suggesting that the Israeli government had to
have a u mole" — a clandestine operative — inside the Atomic En-
ergy Commission who had protected Shapiro in the early in-
vestigations of a possible diversion.

There was little due process for Shapiro in all of this. The
subcommittee investigators seemed to take every one of Duck-
ett' s and Kadden's claims at face value. But it is through those
claims that outsiders can begin to understand how the CIA and
the two congressional subcommittees weighed evidence and
what kind of internal checks and balances were imposed on
their investigations.

* An Apollo housewife, Cynthia A. Virostek, eventually began a campaign to in-
crease public awareness of the potential pollution risk from the plant. In 1990, largely
on the strength of her protests, she was elected local councilwoman. Mrs. Virostek,
then thirty-five years old, lives with her husband and two sons five hundred feet from
the Babcock & Wilcox plant. She became involved after company officials announced in
the early 1980s that they were beginning decontamination operations. "That kind of
opened my eyes," she said. "I began asking questions about the plant and nobody gave
me answers." She then began a relentless campaign, through Freedom of Information
inquiries, to force information out into the open. A Pennsylvania health department
study eventually noted, Mrs. Virostek said, that her community was the only one in the
immediate area to have a statistically significant excess in the number of cancer deaths.

254 THE SAMSON OPTION

Duckett's beliefs were most directly expressed in a 1981 ABC
television interview, when he said there had been a "clear con-
sensus" inside the CIA that the "most likely case" was that
Israel had become a nuclear power because of uranium sup-
plied by Shapiro. "I certainly believe that to be the case. ... I
believe that all of my senior analysts who worked on the prob-
lem agreed with me fully," Duckett said. The subcommittee
investigators had no way of knowing, of course, how little
Duckett and his "senior analysts" had been able to learn about
the Israeli nuclear arsenal. The subcommittees also did not
know that Duckett's initial estimate of Israeli nuclear capabil-
ity was primarily based on an assertion to that effect by Ed-
ward Teller, and not on any specific intelligence about the
capacity of the Israeli reactor or the established existence of a
chemical reprocessing plant at Dimona. There also was no spe-
cific evidence linking Shapiro to the delivery of enriched ura-
nium to Israel. Nor did the subcommittees realize that
Duckett's 1974 CIA estimate was not without its critics at the
time. Intelligence officials at the Atomic Energy Commission
insisted that a footnote be added to the estimate pointing out
that "any information" about a diversion of uranium to Israel
was unknown to the commission. "Duckett pushed real hard
inside the USIB [United States Intelligence Board] to incorpo-
rate Israel and Apollo" in the special estimate, one AEC official
recalled, "and it got in there."

Nonetheless, Henry R. Myers and Peter D. Stockton, the
chief investigators for the congressional subcommittees, have
spent nearly fifteen years relaying the Duckett and Hadden
suppositions to journalists as the views of knowledgeable intel-
ligence sources; many reporters published the beliefs of Duck-
ett and Hadden as "facts."

For example, Myers, a specialist on energy issues for the
House Subcommittee on Energy, told the author at the begin-
ning of his research into Zalman Shapiro that there "are rea-
sons to believe that NUMEC had been set up solely for the
diversion. The reason for this," Myers explained, "is that no
one's ever seen clearly where the money came from." Myers
referred to David Lowenthal's role in 1948 in Israel and added:
"There were reports of a secure telephone or teletype between

INJUSTICE 255

NUMEC and the Israeli embassy." Myers also told of sitting in
on a meeting about NUMEC between Richard Helms and a
group of legislators: "Helms said, in effect, that Shapiro was
the head of a group of people collecting information, some clas-
sified and some not, for Israel." There was a further allegation
that CIA operatives in Israel had found "traces of enriched
uranium" near Dimona that was similar to the enriched prod-
ucts that had been delivered for processing to Shapiro's plant.
There also was a highly suspicious meeting at the airport in
Pittsburgh between Shapiro and Jeruham Kafkafi, an Israeli
scientific attache, who flew, so the FBI reported, from Wash-
ington to Pittsburgh for the meeting and returned immediately
to Washington. Myers described Kafkafi as "a possible Israeli
intelligence officer."

Myers continued to believe well into the early 1990s that his
statements were correct. But the fact is that David Lowenthal
was one of a number of investors in NUMEC, some of whom
were not Jewish. There was no special secure telephone or tele-
type at NUMEC, a fact acknowledged by Duckett and others
who have investigated the alleged diversion. Richard Helms
may indeed have been convinced that Shapiro was the head of
an Israeli spy ring, but there is no known factual basis for that
assertion. Duckett and other government investigators into
NUMEC acknowledged that there was no meaningful correla-
tion between the uranium processed in the NUMEC plant and
the traces of enriched uranium picked up by American agents
outside Dimona. And, finally, Shapiro told the congressional
investigators — who obviously did not believe him — that his air-
port meeting with Kafkafi was arranged at his request because
he had not been paid for the antiterrorist equipment his com-
pany had shipped to Israel; NUMEC was owed $32,000 — a fact
he found "embarrassing" — but the company needed the
money.

Duckett, in a 1991 interview, essentially recanted many of his
previous assertions. "With all the grief I've caused," he said,
referring to Shapiro's ruined career, "I know of nothing at all
to indicate that Shapiro was guilty. There's circumstantial in-
formation, but I have never attempted to make a judgment on

256 THE SAMSON OPTION

this. At no point did I have any vested interest in this whole
process. It was a matter of trying to be sure when you had
information that you passed it along. Ultimately," Duckett
said, "you have no control over the information. I never met
Shapiro and at no point was I interested in peddling the story."
Peter Stockton also acknowledged in a 1991 interview that
he'd had continuing doubts about the credibility of Hadden. "I
was never overwhelmed with him," Stockton said. He had been
troubled, he said, when Hadden told one story to subcommit-
tee investigators and legislators, and then told a different ver-
sion of the same event to officials of the Government
Accounting Office, which did a separate investigation of the
alleged NUMEC diversion. "We were dependent on certain
people," Stockton said, "who jerked us around." Yet Stockton
continued to meet with reporters about NUMEC and contin-
ued to spread the same misinformation, and many journalists
remain convinced that Shapiro diverted uranium for the Israeli
bomb. In their book Dangerous Liaison, published in 1991, An-
drew and Leslie Cockburn, who interviewed Stockton in 1989,
depicted Shapiro's role in the Israeli acquisition of nuclear
weapons as being so "delicate" that five American Presidents
covered it up. "Stockton," they wrote, "found that at least one
CIA official had a very clear idea of what the NUMEC affair
was really all about. John Hadden. . . ."

Babcock & Wilcox shut down Zalman Shapiro's Apollo plant
in 1978, when the nuclear fuels business suffered a downturn,
largely because of reduced business from the Navy. Shapiro's
insistence that the missing uranium had seeped into the ground
or been flung into the air eventually spawned a controversy
over nuclear pollution; Babcock & Wilcox, under public pres-
sure, agreed to keep the Apollo plant open in an attempt to
determine how much contamination existed. In 1989 the firm
began to decontaminate the plant, an expensive process that
involved the virtual dismantling of some areas. Babcock & Wil-
cox told the community that it would explore ways to return
the site to productive use — and promised that future operations
would involve no radioactive materials.

Late in 1990, Congress approved a Defense Department ap-

INJUSTICE 257

propriations bill that included $30 million to be spent in an
attempt to clean up the plant, with matching funds from Bab-
cock & Wilcox. Company officials acknowledged that many sec-
tions of the plant, including its concrete floor, were so
contaminated that they had to be dismantled, piece by piece,
and buried at appropriate sites — after the valuable uranium
was removed. Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials subse-
quently admitted that more than one hundred kilograms of en-
riched uranium — the amount allegedly diverted to Israel by
Zalman Shapiro — was recovered from the decommissioned
plant by 1982, with still more being recovered each year. (Such
recoveries are called "inventory gains" by the NRC.) It wasn't
clear how much uranium would finally be found. It also wasn't
clear whether the $60 million allotted for the cleanup by the
government and Babcock & Wilcox would be enough to do the
job. And it wasn't clear that the site would ever be safe for
occupancy.

19

The Carter Malaise

The surprising victory of Menachem Begin's Likud
Party in the May 1977 national elections ended twenty-nine
years of Mapai and Labor Party domination of the political
process in Israel. It brought to power a government that was
even more committed than Labor to the Samson Option and
the necessity of an Israeli nuclear arsenal. Begin and his politi-
cal followers represented a populist-nationalist view of a
greater Israel with a right to permanent control of the West
Bank; in their view, the mainstream Zionists, represented by
men such as David Ben-Gurion, had fought three major wars
with no grand strategy. Israel's military aims were seen as hav-
ing been dictated by the other side, whose leaders had chosen
when and on which front war would begin. Begin and his coa-
lition were determined — as they would demonstrate with disas-
trous effect in the 1982 Lebanon War — to use Israeli might to
redraw the political map of the Middle East.

Nuclear weapons appealed to another side of Begin's charac-
ter — his fascination with dramatic military moves, as exempli-
fied by his insistence on the bombing of Iraq's Osirak and his
involvement, as a leader of Irgun, the underground Jewish ter-
rorist organization, in the July 1946 bombing of the King David
Hotel in Jerusalem.* Unlike many Israelis who had immigrated

* The hotel, which was the headquarters for the British military in Jerusalem, was
destroyed after months of planning, following a major British sweep against the Jewish
resistance movement in Palestine that resulted in many arrests and the capture of some
weapons. The explosion killed eighty-two people, including forty Arabs and seventeen
Jews, and led to international condemnation. The British responded a week later by
hanging three suspected Irgun terrorists, and Begin, in turn, ordered the execution of
two British sergeants held captive by Begin's terrorist organization; their bodies were
booby-trapped and left hanging upside down, to the long-lasting horror of many Jews.

260 THE SAMSON OPTION

from Eastern Europe, Begin had a hatred of Communism and
the Soviet Union. He and his family had fled to eastern Poland
after the 1939 German blitzkrieg and, like many Zionists, were
arrested by Soviet troops and expelled to a Siberian gulag, only
to be released into a hastily assembled Polish contingent of the
Red Army after the 1941 Nazi invasion of Russia.

By all accounts, Begin had never visited Dimona before becom-
ing prime minister, nor was he especially well informed about
it. His initial briefings on sensitive national security matters
were provided by the outgoing prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin.
Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli signals intelligence expert
then serving as a civilian official in the ministry of defense,
recalled that Begin strongly endorsed Dimona's plans for the
nuclear targeting of the Soviet Union. Begin went a step fur-
ther, according to Ben-Menashe: u He gave orders to target
more Soviet cities."* The increased targeting, Ben-Menashe
said, created a heightened demand for American satellite intel-
ligence. But Israeli military attaches and diplomats were run-
ning into a brick wall in Washington, as the Carter

* Ben-Menashe served more than ten years in the External Relations Department of
the Israeli Defense Force, one of the most sensitive offices in Israel's intelligence com-
munity. He left the ministry in 1987, he said, to work directly for Prime Minister
Yitzhak Shamir as an adviser on intelligence affairs. He was arrested in 1989 in the
United States on charges of conspiring to violate the Arms Export Control Act by
attempting to sell Israeli-owned C-130 military aircraft to Iran; he was acquitted in
November 1990 by a federal jury in New York City. During preliminary proceedings
and the trial, the Israeli government provided a series of conflicting statements about
Ben-Menashe, who claimed that the illegal sale had been sanctioned by his government
and the United States. Israel initially told the court that it had no knowledge of Ben-
Menashe. It later accused Ben-Menashe of forging the four letters of reference that he
had obtained upon leaving his job in External Relations. After acknowledging that the
letters were genuine, it then depicted Ben-Menashe as nothing more than a low-level
translator for the Israeli intelligence community. Ben-Menashe, in turn, accused his
government of betrayal after Israel insisted to the court that he had been moonlighting
as an arms salesman, and he began to talk publicly about what he alleged was his
involvement in hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of authorized arms sales to Iran
in the early 1980s that had been secretly endorsed by the Reagan administration. He
also accused Robert M. Gates, a senior CIA official under Reagan, of direct involve-
ment, despite Israeli protests, in the sale of arms, including chemical weapons, to Iraq
from 1986 to 1989. Ben-Menashe's allegations, which have been strongly denied in Wash-
ington and Jerusalem, were still under congressional review as of summer 1991.

The author was initially contacted by Ben-Menashe in mid-1990 and began inter-
viewing him in Washington and elsewhere in early 1991 about the Israeli nuclear arse-
nal and his activities inside the Israeli signals intelligence establishment. Ben-Menashe
agreed — as no other Israeli would — to be directly quoted by the author on nuclear
issues and other matters. In June, he left America for exile in Australia.

THE CARTER MALAISE 261

administration retreated from the intense relationship that had
developed under Presidents Nixon and Ford. One American
officer who was in charge of a military intelligence agency in
the first years of the Carter presidency depicted the Israelis as
being all over the Pentagon and preoccupied with intelligence
on the Soviets: "They were buzzing around. They were trying
to get into overhead and they also wanted to know what our
[military] attaches were reporting and what our requirements
were. Our establishment was like a honeycomb for them."

Begin's enthusiastic support for the targeting of the Soviet
Union was not known to the American intelligence commu-
nity, still obsessed with its efforts to prove that Zalman Shapiro
had diverted uranium to Israel. There was no doubt inside the
intelligence community that Israel had the bomb, and yet no
one in Washington — not even the new administration of Jimmy
Carter, the first to be seriously committed to nuclear non-
proliferation — saw any reason to raise the issue.

The Israeli government, worried about a backlash from its
American supporters, continued to publicly deny the existence
of any nuclear weapons — even when faced with evidence to the
contrary. In 1976, after Carl Duckett inadvertently revealed in
Washington that the CIA estimated Israel's arsenal to total at
least ten warheads, U.S. Ambassador Malcolm Toon had been
summoned by Yigal Allon, the foreign minister, to discuss the
issue. "[Allon] was very disturbed over this development,"
Toon said in a cable to the State Department, "and felt it
scarcely compatible with relationship between our two coun-
tries. . . . He asked rhetorically why CIA had done it." Toon
reported that he dutifully explained to Allon that Duckett's
remarks were supposed to have been off-the-record. He then
asked Allon whether Duckett's conclusion was accurate: "Al-
lon looked at me, somewhat startled," Toon reported, "and
said, 'It is not true.' "

Allon's bald denial rankled, and a year later, after Carter's
election, Toon told a delegation of thirteen visiting American
senators that he was sure Israel had the bomb. The senators,
led by Abraham Ribicoff, Democrat of Connecticut, were on a
fact-finding tour about the prospects for nonproliferation in

262 THE SAMSON OPTION

the Middle East. They asked permission to inspect Dimona and
were flatly told that no outsider had visited the reactor since
the American inspections had ended in 1969, and none was wel-
come. Toon cabled the State Department about their treat-
ment, complaining that "it was indecent for Israel to keep us
out of Dimona." He vividly recalled the bureaucratic response:
"Don't stir up the waters."*

The senators went much further than the State Department
in attempting to paper over the fact that they had been denied
entrance to the reactor. "This denial was dramatized by the
press far beyond its actual significance," their subsequent pub-
lic report noted. "Most of the delegation did not wish to visit
Dimona because they lacked the technical expertise to make
such a visit worthwhile. The delegation received no informa-
tion as to whether Israel has nuclear weapons or not."

The senators were especially sensitive to the issue, for Con-
gress had just approved an amendment to the Arms Export
Control Act making it illegal to provide U.S. foreign aid funds
to those nations that sold or received nuclear reprocessing or
enrichment materials, equipment, or technology. The amend-
ment, as written, had no impact on those nations, such as
Israel, which had been involved in the transfer or sale of nu-
clear materials prior to the bill's enactment. Israel, in other
words, had been grandfathered out. The legislation, sponsored
by Senator Stuart Symington, also provided for the President
to override the law if he determined that the termination of
such aid would be damaging to American national security.**
The law has been applied two times to Pakistan, and to no
other nation, since its approval.

Congress and the White House were, in essence, acceding to
what had become the arms control community's rationalization

* Mordecai Vanunu, in one of his many interviews with the London Sunday Times y
told of finding a newspaper clip about the rebuff of the senators derisively taped to a
wall in Machon 2, the chemical separation plant at Dimona, when he began working
there in August 1977.

** Victor Gilinsky, the NRC commissioner, said he had been at a Washington din-
ner party shortly after the legislation was passed and listened intently as Symington
made an informal speech about the importance of limiting the spread of nuclear weap-
ons. "When he sat down," Gilinsky said, "I asked him, 'What about Israel?* 'Oh, they
need it/ the senator responded. Tve been telling Dayan for thirty years they have to
have the bomb.* "

THE CARTER MALAISE 263

for its failure to raise questions about the Israeli bomb: Israel
was no longer a proliferation problem — it had already prolifer-
ated. One ranking State Department intelligence official, whose
testimony was crucial to the first Pakistani foreign aid cutoff,
recalled his cynicism about the Symington legislation: "Did
any of these guys [senators] who were grilling me so merci-
lessly about Pakistan ever ask about Israel?" A former Nuclear
Regulatory Commission official, who was responsible for testi-
mony on the NRCs position on Israeli compliance with the
Symington Amendment, recalled his understanding that Con-
gress "doesn't want to discover anything in an open hearing."
Although he was personally convinced Israel had developed
nuclear arms, the official said that he repeatedly testified that he
had "no evidence" of such weapons existing in Israel. If there
were any significant items of information that needed to be
passed along, the official added, "you told them over coffee.
Never at an open hearing."

America's tolerance for a nuclear-armed Israel may not have
troubled the Congress or the media, but it rankled Pakistan's
President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq. George H. Rathjens, a dep-
uty early in the Carter administration to Gerard C. Smith, the
President's specially appointed ambassador-at-large for non-
proliferation issues, vividly recalled Zia's response when Smith
raised questions about Pakistan's nuclear program: " 'Why
don't you people talk to Israel?' Smith was upset," Rathjens
added, "but there was no way to answer Zia — no satisfactory
answer." The Israeli nuclear program "wasn't anything people
[in the U.S. government] wanted to talk about or discuss,"
Rathjens said. "It was an embarrassment."

Cooperation between Israel and South Africa on nuclear issues
began in earnest after the 1967 Six-Day War when Israel, re-
buffed by Charles de Gaulle, was forced to look elsewhere for
support. Pierre Pean, in Les deux bombes, told of the surprising
encounter in Johannesburg in 1967 between a French nuclear
scientist who had been at Dimona and a group of Israeli nu-
clear scientists who had worked ten years earlier with the
French at Saclay and Marcoule. The French physicist and his
colleagues had helped the Israelis learn skills that they were

264 THE SAMSON OPTION

now passing along to the South Africans. Israel was trading its
expertise in nuclear physics for the uranium ore and other stra-
tegic minerals that existed in abundance in South Africa. The
South Africans needed all the technical support they could get,
recalled Ari Ben-Menashe: "They weren't good at all as a nu-
clear state. We had to help all the way."

In 1968, Ernst David Bergmann, out of office in Israel but still
influential on nuclear issues, traveled to South Africa, where he
spoke publicly on the "move toward international collabora-
tion" on nuclear issues. In a speech to the South African Insti-
tute of International Affairs in Johannesburg, Bergmann said
nothing about nuclear weapons, but talked candidly about the
"common problem" facing Israel and South Africa: "Neither
of us has neighbors to whom we can speak and to whom we are
going to be able to speak in the near future. If we are in this
position of isolation, perhaps it might be best for both coun-
tries to speak to each other."

Bergmann's talk of isolation seemed prophetic as all but
three black African states (Malawi, Lesotho, and Swaziland)
broke diplomatic relations with Israel in the wake of the 1973
Yom Kippur War and Israel's continued insistence on holding
on to the occupied territories. Many of Israel's former allies in
Africa increasingly began to support Palestinian aspirations. In
November 1975, the United Nations General Assembly voted
seventy-two to thirty-five (with thirty-two abstentions) in favor
of a resolution that defined Zionism as "a form of racism and
racial discrimination." Israeli Ambassador Chaim Herzog re-
sponded by accusing the United Nations of becoming "the
world center of anti-Semitism."

Israel and South Africa, two "pariah" states, had turned to
each other with renewed trading and arms sales after the war;
within three years, joint trade grew from $30 million to $100
million a year. South Africa's small but influential Jewish pop-
ulation of 118,000 were always large contributors to Israeli bond
drives and charities; now they also became more vocal in their
support for Israel's more conservative political parties, includ-
ing Menachem Begin's Likud Party. In 1974, Defense Minister
Moshe Dayan had made a secret trip to Pretoria, where, ac-
cording to Ari Ben-Menashe, he discussed the possibility of an

THE CARTER MALAISE 265

Israeli nuclear test on South African soil. Dayan left the Israeli
cabinet a few months later, when Yitzhak Rabin became prime
minister, but continuity on key Israeli-South African defense
and nuclear issues was assured with Rabin's appointment of
Shimon Peres to the defense portfolio. Two years later, Prime
Minister John Vorster, who had sided with Germany during
World War II, visited Israel — the first official state visit by a
South African prime minister in Israel's history.*

Peres made at least one private trip to Pretoria before the
Vorster visit, just as he had made private trips to France
twenty years earlier to arrange for arms and nuclear coopera-
tion. His agenda included nuclear testing — the issue initially
raised by Moshe Dayan — and he won a commitment in princi-
ple from John Vorster, according to Ben-Menashe, for a series
of joint Israeli-South African tests in South Africa. Vorster's
highly publicized visit to Israel resulted in a renewal of full
diplomatic relations, as well as secret arms transfer agreements
that would enable the two countries, working together in defi-
ance of international opinion and United Nations sanctions, to
emerge by the early 1980s as economies that were highly depen-
dent on foreign arms sales.

Israeli sources put the number of secret military and nuclear
understandings between Israel and South Africa at u six or
seven" by the end of the Vorster visit. "Why?" a former Israeli
official asked rhetorically. He cited four reasons. u One: to share
basic resources. South Africa is a very rich country and Israel is
poor. Two: the supply of raw materials. Three: testing
grounds. Try to do a [nuclear] test in Israel and all hell breaks
loose. In South Africa it's different. Four: there is a certain
sympathy for the situation of South Africa among Israelis.
They are also European settlers standing against a hostile
world.

"South Africa, when it realized it wanted to go nuclear, also
realized there was one country it could turn to," added the
Israeli, who has firsthand knowledge of Israel's nuclear policy.

* The April 1976 visit was denounced by the Organization of African States (OAS)
and the Cairo-based Arab League, as well as by the Soviet Union and the Netherlands.

266 THE SAMSON OPTION

The issue of Israel's nuclear arms remained in the background
in the first years of the Carter administration, whose major
priorities included a Middle East solution. The nuclear intelli-
gence experts at Los Alamos and Livermore had been trying
to monitor the shipment of uranium ore from South Africa to
Israel since the early 1960s, but simply failed to see, or failed to
understand, the full scope of South Africa's continuing efforts
in nuclear technology. In 1970, Prime Minister John Vorster
informed Parliament that the nation's nuclear scientists had
developed a unique uranium enrichment process involving jet-
nozzle enrichment and a sophisticated cascade technique.
Within a few years, South Africa began construction of a pilot
plant for the production of enriched uranium, not subject to
IAEA safeguards, at a plant called Valindaba near Pretoria.*

The American intelligence community knew nothing of the
secret negotiations between Vorster and Peres, but there were
a few analysts who knew something was up between the two
nations. By the mid-1970s, one American official recalled, "[t]he
South Africans and Israel were suddenly doing things in such a
different way that it took us by surprise. They went from the
drawing board to the production [of enriched uranium]. They
leapfrogged us in production design and output and we
weren't looking in the right places." The official's point was
that the nuclear production process in the United States was so
huge and unwieldy that innovations were difficult to achieve;
any new process would be tested for years in pilot production
before being adopted in the government's main weapons as-
sembly line near Amarillo, Texas, which is capable of produc-
ing five thousand or more warheads a year.

By the mid-1970s, South Africa considered itself in an analo-
gous position to that faced by Israel after 1967: it was fighting
an internal war against the African National Congress and the
anti-apartheid movement as well as a war of secession in
Namibia, and an external war against the growing black na-
tionalism and emerging independence of Angola and Mozam-

* The plant's name, Valindaba, hints at its real purpose: it means "the council is
closed" or "the talking is over" in the local African Sotho dialect.

THE CARTER MALAISE 267

bique in the frontline states of southern Africa. In the long
run, the military prospects of South Africa were bleak: the
leaders of South Africa saw themselves, as did the men running
Israel, to be vastly outnumbered by their enemies.

There was security, so the Afrikaners believed, in the nu-
clear bomb. And, like Israel, South Africa would need a
weapon — a low-yield nuclear artillery shell — that could be used
in case frontline defenses were breached and urban centers
threatened. In August 1977, Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev
privately warned the Carter administration that his nation's
Cosmos satellite system had detected evidence of South African
preparations for a nuclear test, or series of tests, at what was
determined to be an underground site in the Kalahari. Similar
warnings were sent to Britain, France, and West Germany, all
participants — with the Soviets and the United States — in a 1975
conference in London that had set up the Nuclear Suppliers
Group, which established a series of voluntary guidelines for
limiting technical and material aid to non-nuclear nations.*

An American satellite was immediately routed over the
Kalahari and saw the classic signs of preparations for an under-
ground nuclear test — a test hole had been dug with casing
around it, an observation tower had been put up, and the many
cables needed for measurement were in place. Carter and
Brezhnev, working together, led an international campaign of
protest, and the South African government, facing the loss of
diplomatic relations, backed down by the end of August. Carter
publicly announced that "South Africa has informed us that
they do not have and do not intend to develop nuclear explo-
sive devices for any purpose, either peaceful or as a weapon."
The President also said he had been assured that the Kalahari
test site "is not designed ... to test nuclear explosives, and

* Third World nations, not without reason, accused the Nuclear Suppliers Group —
convened after India's 1974 nuclear test — of instituting what amounted to an interna-
tional cartel to perpetuate the advanced positions of the major powers; there were
further claims that the agreements violated the promise given to non-nuclear states in
Article Six of the Nonproliferation Treaty, which explicitly calls on all parties to
facilitate "the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and tech-
nological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy." The NPT also called
for special attention to the "needs of the developing areas of the world."

268 THE SAMSON OPTION

that no nuclear explosive test will be taken in South Africa
now or in the future."

The White House, jubilant over its first major foreign policy
success, arranged for a series of elaborate briefings to the news
media about the intricacies of its successful diplomacy. The
reporters were not told, however, that the CIA had reported
that Israeli military personnel, in civilian clothes, were all over
the Kalahari test site, and being "quite open about it," as a CIA
officer recalled. The press also was not told that a senior South
African diplomat had privately assured the United States at the
height of the crisis in early August that his military was not
planning to test a long-range missile, but only "a rocket or
artillery round — something like that."

The CIA would later conclude, in a formal assessment for
the White House, that the strong international protests over
Kalahari had deflected South Africa "at least temporarily"
from carrying out its planned test. Israelis, added the CIA as-
sessment, have "participated in certain South African nuclear
research activities over the last few years. . . ."

Carter's heavily promoted diplomatic "victory in the desert"
was far less significant than it appeared; a real triumph would
have involved going a step further and taking on the Israeli
nuclear program, and no one in the Carter White House had
the stomach for that.

It was into this Washington that an Israeli with inside informa-
tion about Dimona — seeking to trade that information for per-
sonal advancement — arrived late in the year. He contacted a
senior official in the American nuclear intelligence community
with whom he had dealt professionally in the past, and imme-
diately revealed the fact that Israel had assembled well over one
hundred nuclear warheads. There would be more than two
hundred warheads, many of them low-yield devices, by the
year 1980, the Israeli added. The American official, who is Jew-
ish, understood why the Israeli was willing to talk: "He was a
technical person looking for favors. This guy wanted to be-
come a U.S. citizen." The fact that Israel had nuclear weapons,
the American rationalized, was "general knowledge through-
out the U.S. government. My feeling was this one individual

THE CARTER MALAISE 269

wanted to hustle information for personal advantage. I decided
to ignore it."

And so he did not forward the information to his superiors
and colleagues, although he had no doubt that the information
was accurate. The American said he knew of Israelis in other
technical fields, apparently dismayed by the election of Begin,
who had approached their American counterparts with offers
to trade information and intelligence for a chance to emigrate
to the United States.

There were other, and more traditional, approaches, as the
relationship between Jimmy Carter and Menachem Begin be-
came increasingly strained in the wake of Camp David, and as
some Israeli officials tried — apparently without high-level ap-
proval — to get some strategic help for Israeli ambitions and put
an end to America's refusal to recognize the reality of the Is-
raeli nuclear arsenal.

Their starting point was an appropriately obscure corner of
the Pentagon known as the Office of Net Assessments, whose
director, Andrew W. Marshall, a former Rand Corporation an-
alyst, has been providing secretaries of defense with an inde-
pendent flow of intelligence and analysis for two decades. In
the last months of the Ford administration, Marshall won ac-
ceptance of a plan to begin a strategic dialogue with Israel; one
goal was to investigate a possible cooperative U.S.-Israeli de-
fense treaty. Some of Israel's most sophisticated strategic think-
ers were assigned by Prime Minister Rabin to the ad hoc
group, including Avraham Tamir, an Israeli Army general
who would later serve as director general of the foreign minis-
try. It was Tamir, one member of the Marshall group recalled,
who repeatedly sought to discuss nuclear issues after Anwar
Sadat's dramatic visit to Jerusalem in November 1977, the first
step toward the Camp David talks.* The question was: would
Marshall and his Defense Department staff discuss contingency

* Sadat met privately with Begin shortly after arriving in Jerusalem, and, according
to Israeli officials, his first questions dealt with the Israeli nuclear arsenal. One Israeli
who has seen a high-level summary of the Begin-Sadat meeting said that the Egyptian
leader sought assurances that Israel would pledge not to use nuclear weapons against
Egypt if a peace treaty between the two nations was signed. Begin did not reply,
according to the Israeli account.

270 THE SAMSON OPTION

plans for joint nuclear targeting of southern Russia in case of
war?

That question was supersensitive, as all involved understood
— America was still officially accepting Israeli assurances it had
no nuclear arms — and it was referred in writing on at least two
occasions to Secretary of Defense Harold Brown for guidance.
The answer, in both cases, came back quickly: there was to be
no discussion of nuclear doctrine by Marshall's shop.

Brown, interviewed later about Tamir's initiative, at first dis-
missed it as another example of the need for military planners
to make contingency plans. He then spoke hypothetically: "If
such a request did come to me, it didn't take me long to think
about it." He finally acknowledged that he had rejected the
Israeli approach without discussing it with President Carter.
The Carter administration, Brown asserted, "would not have
wanted to get involved in an Israeli-Soviet conflict. The whole
idea of Israel becoming our asset seems crazy to me. The Israe-
lis would say, 'Let us help you,' and then you end up being
their tool. The Israelis have their own security interests and we
have our interests. They are not identical." Andrew Marshall
and his colleagues in the Office of Net Assessments viewed
Brown's position as — as one American put it — "a foolish con-
straint," but followed his instructions and, of course, told no
one else in the U.S. government about the Israeli request for
joint nuclear targeting.*

It was another disconnect as the American bureaucracy in-
stinctively continued to protect its President from learning the
facts about the Israeli nuclear capability — and from having to
act on that knowledge. That instinct reached its height in the
fall of 1979, when the Israelis and the South Africans finally
pulled off their test.

* A senior American intelligence official recalled that the French had occasionally
made similar requests to the Pentagon for joint nuclear targeting and intelligence
sharing and invariably been rejected out of hand, without the issue being raised at the
secretary of defense level, as was done with Avraham Tamir's proposal. "It was mani-
fest that no one was afraid of the French," the official said, "but they were afraid of the
Israelis. We all knew the French didn't have a back-door relationship" with the White
House, as Israel did.

20

An Israeli Test

Just before dawn on the stormy morning of September
22, 1979, the clouds over the South Indian Ocean suddenly broke
and an American satellite was able to record two distinctive
bright flashes of light within a fraction of a second — probable
evidence of a nuclear explosion. The nuclear detection satellite,
known as vela, had seen similar flashes of light on forty-one
previous occasions, and in each case it was subsequently deter-
mined that a nuclear explosion had taken place. Most of the
sightings were over Lap Nor, where the Chinese atmospheric
nuclear tests took place, or in the South Pacific, site of the
French tests. There were a few intelligence officials and non-
proliferation experts in the Carter administration who immedi-
ately concluded that Israel and South Africa had finally
conducted a nuclear test, a test that they had tried, and failed,
to accomplish two years earlier.

They were right.

Former Israeli government officials, whose information on
other aspects of Dimona's activities has been corroborated, said
that the warhead tested that Saturday morning was a low-yield
nuclear artillery shell that had been standardized for use by the
Israeli Defense Force. The Israeli sources also said the event
captured by the vela satellite was not the first but the third test
of a nuclear device over the Indian Ocean. At least two Israeli
Navy ships had sailed to the site in advance, and a contingent
of Israeli military men and nuclear experts — along with the
South African Navy — was observing the tests. u We wouldn't
send ships down there for one test," one Israeli said. "It was a
fuck-up," he added, referring to the capture of a test by the
vela satellite. "There was a storm and we figured it would

272 THE SAMSON OPTION

block vela, but there was a gap in the weather — a window —
and vela got blinded by the flash."

The vela satellite, as it was programmed to do, digitally re-
layed its sighting to the headquarters of the Air Force Techni-
cal Applications Center (AFTAC) at Patrick Air Force Base in
Cape Canaveral, Florida; it was Friday night, September 21, on
the East Coast. Once evaluated and confirmed, the intelligence
was routed, via the Defense Intelligence Agency, to the Penta-
gon's National Military Command Center and relayed to
America's top civilian and military leaders. The nuclear event
was estimated to have taken place off the coast of Prince Ed-
ward Island, about fifteen hundred miles southeast of the Cape
of Good Hope in South Africa, halfway to Antarctica. The
intelligence was at the top of the CIA's and DIA's Saturday-
morning briefing for President Carter and his national security
adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Gerald G. Oplinger, Brzezinski's aide for global issues, was
spending the early fall weekend at his summer house at Deep
Creek Lake, Maryland, when word of the possible test came: he
was summoned back to an urgent meeting in the White House
situation room. Oplinger had retired from the Foreign Service
and worked at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before
joining Brzezinski's staff; he was familiar with the vela pro-
gram and knew that its previous sightings of Chinese and
French atmospheric tests had been unfailingly accurate. "Ev-
erybody showed up," Oplinger recalled, meaning that Brzezin-
ski was at the meeting, "and we went around and asked, 'Was it
a test?' CIA and DIA said that odds were at least ninety percent
that it had been a nuclear explosion." Oplinger personally had
no doubt, as he recalled: "Common sense told me that there
was a high probability that it was what it was — it was just too
incredible."

"People just stood there, paralyzed," recalled Spurgeon M.
Keeny, Jr., deputy director of the Arms Control and Disarma-
ment Agency (ACDA), a senior bureaucrat who had been in-
volved in high-level scientific issues since the Eisenhower
administration. Keeny realized, he said, that he and his col-
leagues "needed to buy some time. Even if a test was done, we

AN ISRAELI TEST 273

didn't know who did it. This was a serious matter." Keeny also
was troubled by the intelligence community's assurances that
its assessment was 90 percent accurate. In his view, the CIA
and DIA officials at the situation-room meeting surely could
not know all the facts: "They were middle-level bureaucrats
relaying data."

In Keeny's account, it was his idea to set up an outside panel
to study the vela data and ensure that the satellite had not
made an error — one with enormous political consequences.
Jerry Oplinger had a different recollection: "The meeting was
going nowhere and Frank Press [the presidential science ad-
viser] said, 'Let's convene an unbiased outside study.' "
Oplinger had no illusions about what Frank Press meant:
"Press kept on asking, 'What do we do if it leaks out that we've
concluded it was a test?' He did not want that panel to con-
clude there had been a nuclear explosion." Brzezinski had little
to say during the meeting, Oplinger recalled.*

Frank Press, a seismologist who had worked for years on
classified nuclear detection issues, knew the vela program far
better than any of his peers in the White House. He knew that
the satellites were ancient by satellite standards — some having
been launched in the early 1960s — and were constantly being
updated and analyzed by scientists at the Los Alamos Scientific
Laboratories, who had helped design the system, to ensure that
no deterioration had set in. There had been, in fact, recent
concern about false alarms that could trigger a phony intelli-
gence report. The outside panel was a natural step, one that
would indeed buy some time, and one that would also add a
patina of legitimacy to the delaying effort. Meanwhile, exis-

* Brzezinski, according to his aides, was never particularly interested in prolifera-
tion or nuclear-fuel-cycle issues. President Carter had triggered an uproar by continu-
ing President Ford's 1976 ban on the commercial reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel for
power reactors. Carter's action, based on environmental and proliferation concerns,
was viewed by the American nuclear power industry as a foolish move that would stifle
the sale of American reactors and equipment around the world. His NSC aides weren't
convinced that Brzezinski fully understood the issue. At one stage early in the adminis-
tration, Oplinger recalled being told, Brzezinski agreed to a briefing by Jessica Tuch-
man, Oplinger's predecessor on the NSC staff, and stood by as she described the
nuclear fuel cycle, beginning with the insertion of nuclear fuel into a reactor and
ending with the reprocessing of the spent fuel. "Zbig listened to all this," Oplinger
related, "and then asked, 'Okay, now tell me — where does the energy come from?' "
Brzezinski did not mention the vela incident in his 1983 memoir Power and Principle.

274 THE SAMSON OPTION

tence of the vela sighting became one of the most important
secrets of the Carter administration.

The officials at the top of the troubled Carter administration
knew that public revelation of the vela sighting, with its
strong inference of an illicit Israeli-South African test, would
create a horrible dilemma for the President, just a few months
away from the 1980 presidential campaign. Carter had draped
himself in the flag of nonproliferation, and if he did not get
tough with the two pariah nations, he would be criticized for
hypocrisy; if he did seek sanctions, there would be political hell
to pay. "When that thing up there went 'Twinkle, twinkle,
little star,' " recalled Hodding Carter III, then the assistant sec-
retary of state for public affairs, "I can remember running
around on the seventh floor," where Secretary of State Cyrus
R. Vance's office was located. "There was sheer panic," Carter
said. "It was very much 'Oh, shit. Oh, dear. What do we do
with this?' "

"We were in the worst possible position," another govern-
ment official recalled. "Here we are, ready to send the SALT
treaty up to the Senate, and we know there's been a violation of
the [1963] test ban treaty and we can't prove it and we can't pin
it on anyone. There was a very immediate strategic imperative
to make this thing go away." The official, who had access to all
of the available intelligence on the vela sighting, said it was
evident that the satellite had observed what "could only be a
nuclear event. Our capturing it fortuitously was an embarrass-
ment, a big political problem, and there were a lot of people
who wanted to obscure the event."

The American policy in Iran was in chaos, with the ailing
shah — who had been so warmly toasted two years earlier by
Jimmy Carter — in Mexico and pleading for admission to the
United States.* There had been a stupendous intelligence gaffe

* The shah was admitted for medical treatment into the United States on October
22, triggering a renewed wave of anti-American rioting in Tehran and the eventual
seizure of the American embassy on November 4, beginning Jimmy Carter's hostage
nightmare. During the tense discussions before the shah's arrival, recalled Nicholas
Veliotes, then serving as the assistant secretary of state for Near East and South Asian
affairs, the ousted leader confided that he had been negotiating with the Israelis for the
purchase of long-range missiles capable of firing a nuclear warhead. "He said that the
Israelis had told him not to tell us," Veliotes added. Veliotes's information, like most

AN ISRAELI TEST 275

just a few weeks before over a breathtaking report suggesting
that a Soviet brigade had moved into Cuba, presenting a direct
challenge to Carter, just as the Soviets had challenged John F.
Kennedy in 1962. The intelligence leaked, and the administra-
tion, taking the hard line in public, demanded that the Soviets
remove their troops. It turned out not to be a triumphant Cu-
ban missile crisis, however, as embarrassed Carter officials
were forced to acknowledge that their initial intelligence re-
port was simply wrong: Soviet soldiers had been in Cuba since
the early 1960s. Adding to the mortification was the fact that
the administration was then preparing for what was sure to be
a bitter fight with Senate Republicans over the U.S. govern-
ment's ability to verify the June 1979 SALT II agreements. The
SALT agreement plus Carter's success at Camp David were
scheduled to be featured in his reelection campaign.

An Israeli bomb threatened all this and made it imperative
that the American President, once again, not know what there
was to know. The American bureaucracy had been in training
for more than thirty years in looking the other way when it
came to the Israeli nuclear program, and every part of the sys-
tem instinctively sought to find a way to avoid calling the Is-
raeli-South African test a test.

There was widespread knowledge of the test in Israel. Ari Ben-
Menashe recalled seeing correspondence on the issue in his
ministry of defense office shortly after Menachem Begin's elec-
tion in 1977. It was widely assumed that there had been some
secret diplomacy between former Defense Minister Shimon
Peres and John Vorster during Peres's visit to South Africa in
1976, but just what commitments had been made were not
widely known inside the Israeli government. It was also under-
stood, Ben-Menashe said, that Peres was not going to tell
Menachem Begin about it. And Begin, in turn, would not di-
rectly approach Peres, who — along with David Ben-Gurion —
had treated him with contempt and ridicule throughout his
career. Begin's solution was to dispatch Ezer Weizman, the
newly appointed minister of defense, to South Africa.

intelligence data about Israeli nuclear intentions, was not made known to other Ameri-
can officials.

276 THE SAMSON OPTION

Weizman's mission, said Ben-Menashe, was "just to find out
what was going on."

"Weizman came back," Ben-Menashe recalled, "and said,
'We've promised these guys nuclear warheads.' He recom-
mended to Begin that they pay up and carry out the promise."
Ben-Menashe said he and others in External Relations under-
stood that Begin responded by saying, in effect, "Yes. Do it!"

Another Israeli, who also had direct access to defense minis-
try information about the test in South Africa, said that
Weizman signed an agreement before the 1979 tests calling for
the sale to South Africa of technology and equipment needed
for the manufacture of low-yield 175mm and 203mm nuclear
artillery shells. Weizman's order triggered an internal dispute
with senior nuclear officials, the Israeli recalled, who protested
the government's decision to sell the information, considered
by the men running Dimona to be "the best stuff we got."*

Frank Press finally settled on Jack P. Ruina, a professor of
electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology, to direct the outside panel and determine whether
some of Israel's "best stuff" had ended up over the South In-
dian Ocean. It was a perfect choice, in terms of discretion:
Ruina, a longtime consultant to the Pentagon on military and
scientific issues, held many of the most sensitive clearances in
the American military and scientific community; he had served
as director in the early 1960s of the Advanced Research Project
Agency (ARPA), the Pentagon's research arm, and later di-
rected the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA), the Pentagon's
most important think tank. Ruina was an honorable and cau-
tious man who could be counted on to follow orders and not
talk to reporters, especially after his hush-hush introduction to
the White House crisis. "Press called and asked me to come on

* After the 1973 war, the Israeli Defense Force established at least three nuclear-
capable artillery battalions, each containing twelve self-propelled 175mm cannons. The
battalions were considered part of Israel's strategic reserve and operated under stream-
lined command-and-control: nuclear shells could be fired on the direct orders of the
prime minister, as relayed through the minister of defense, the Army Chief of Staff,
and the chief of operations directly to the artillery battalion commander. Clearance
was not required, as in normal operations, from any officer at the regional headquar-
ters, corps, division, or brigade level. Former Israeli army officers said at least three
nuclear artillery shells eventually were stockpiled for each weapon — a total of 108 war-
heads. Additional warheads were supplied for Israel's 203mm cannons.

AN ISRAELI TEST 277

down [to the White House]," Ruina recalled. "He said, 'I can't
talk about it on the phone. Just come on down.' "

Within weeks, as the White House's secret continued to hold,
Press and Ruina picked an ad hoc panel of eight distinguished
scientists, whose integrity was beyond reproach. Ruina's key
colleagues included Luis Alvarez, of the physics department at
the University of California, a Nobel laureate; Wolfgang K. H.
Panofsky, of Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center;
and Richard L. Garwin, of IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research
Center. Panofsky and Garwin had served often as government
consultants and were known for their independence.

The panel's assignment, carefully drawn up by Spurgeon
Keeny and Frank Press, was weighted, to no one's surprise,
toward a thorough investigation into the possibility that the
vela sighting had been a false alarm. The Ruina panel was also
told to investigate the possibility that the recorded signal "was
of natural origin, possibly resulting from the coincidence of
two or more natural phenomena. ..."

Ruina was clear about the limits on his assignment. "My
mandate was to only look at technical data," he recalled. He
and his colleagues were provided with all of the available intel-
ligence about the vela sighting, Ruina said, "but we didn't in-
clude any political data — like are the Israelis interested in
nuclear weapons? That was not in our charter." The panel
members were comfortable with their mandate: purely techni-
cal studies were a way of life for scientific consultants to the
government.

Despite its explosiveness, knowledge of the vela report re-
mained a closely held secret for more than a month, until ABC
television reporter John Scali was told by an old friend about a
simulated Soviet nuclear attack on the United States that had
been missed by America's early warning system. The old
friend was very conservative, Scali recalled, and he thought the
American failure "was an outrage." Scali, who had been the
ambassador to the United Nations under Nixon, ran the story
by another old friend in the Pentagon. Within hours, he was
summoned to the office of a senior Defense Department official

278 THE SAMSON OPTION

who gave him the essential facts.* He broadcast his story on the
evening of October 25: the secret had held for more than a
month, long enough for the White House to have its cover
story ready. Its spokesmen immediately informed the news me-
dia that there was "no confirmation" of a test. Secretary of
State Vance, following the company line, also told journalists
there was no conclusive evidence of a test, and South Africa
issued a heated denial.** "Faced with a denial by South Africa
of such nuclear activity," dutifully wrote the New York Times,
"and lacking any proof beyond the uncorroborated evidence of
a single satellite, the United States Government sought to
avoid a major confrontation over what it said was only the
possibility that some nation had secretly exploded a nuclear
device in an area of some 4,500 square miles. . . ." Vance fur-
ther told the press that within hours of the first vela signal, he
had discussed the matter with Brzezinski and Defense Secre-
tary Harold Brown.

None of the reporters knew, of course, that Harold Brown's
Office of Net Assessments had already been approached two
times by a senior Israeli official seeking to discuss joint U.S.-
Israeli strategic targeting of the Soviet Union. Did Brown tell
Cyrus Vance at the time about the nuclear approach, or, for
that matter, did he report it to the President and his national
security adviser? Did anyone in the U.S. government review
the intelligence files on the planned 1977 South African test in
the Kalahari? Did any of the senior White House officials won-
der why a flotilla of South African and Israeli military ships
had been tracked by the National Security Agency and other
elements of the intelligence community to a site fifteen hun-
dred miles off the coast of South Africa?*

* Carter, with his emphasis on nonproliferation and human rights, was less than
popular at the Pentagon.

## One of the strangest denials to emerge from the controversy came from South
African Vice Admiral J. C. Walters, who made public a statement suggesting that the
flash could have been caused by an accident aboard a Soviet nuclear submarine. The
admiral's statement, which said that Soviet involvement was "a real possibility," was
reported by the New York Times to have been issued with the approval of Prime Minis-
ter P. W. Botha, who also was South Africa's minister of defense. The admiral offered
no factual basis for his Cold War assertion, which soon sank from sight.

t Victor Gilinsky, still serving in 1979 on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, re-
called inquiring during an official briefing whether there were ships in the Indian
Ocean and being told no. He learned the next day that there indeed had been ships

AN ISRAELI TEST 279

And, finally, did anyone notice what Prime Minister P. W.
Botha had to say on September 25, 1979, three days after the test
— three days in which there had been no international com-
ment or outcry? Botha had reason to believe that his nation and
its Israeli partners had pulled it off. There was a swagger in his
remarks before a meeting of the Cape National Party congress
as he warned, according to the Rand Daily Mail, that South
Africa had and could produce sufficient arms to counter terror-
ism — an obvious reference to the African National Congress
(ANC), leaders of the anti-apartheid movement. "If there are
people who are thinking of doing something else," the newspa-
per quoted Botha as saying, "I suggest they think twice about
it. They might find out we have military weapons they do not
know about."

The Ruina panel members would spend months effectively
poking holes in and raising legitimate questions about the relia-
bility and integrity of the vela satellite system. The panel
chose to concentrate on what became known as the "false
alarm" issue. Nuclear explosions produce two distinctly char-
acteristic and separate flashes of light — from the initial detona-
tion and the subsequent fireball about one third of a second
later — that are recorded as double humps on a graph by the
vela satellite. The panel was troubled by the anomalies it
found in the double humps as recorded on September 22 and
concluded, as it stated in its final report, that the vela sighting
"contains sufficient internal inconsistency to cast serious doubt
whether that signal originated from a nuclear explosion or in
fact from any light sources in the proximity of the vela satel-
lite." The panel also could find no collateral signs of a nuclear
event — seismic signals, acoustic waves, ionospheric distur-
bances, magnetic or electromagnetic pulses that had accompa-
nied previous vela reports. No significant radioactive fallout or
other debris was located; there was no "smoking gun" that
made the panel's conclusion ineluctable. The lack of such find-
ings was not unusual in itself, given the low yield of the test
and its isolated location; Press and the panel members knew

there. Gilinsky wasn't surprised when the Ruina panel concluded that no nuclear test
probably had taken place: "Everyone took the bureaucratically appropriate decision."

280 THE SAMSON OPTION

that U.S. government seismologists had long suspected the So-
viets had conducted many low-yield tests in the 1950s and 1960s
that were not detected by the available American systems.

The panel eventually reported in July 1980, ten months after
the event, that the flash observed by the satellite u was probably
not from a nuclear explosion. Although we cannot rule out the
possibility that this signal was of nuclear origin," the unclassi-
fied version of the ad hoc report said, "the panel considers it
more likely that the signal was one of the zoo events [a signal of
unknown cause], possibly a consequence of the impact of a
small meteoroid on the satellite."

The findings outraged the nuclear scientists and professional
bomb makers of Los Alamos, who had designed the vela sys-
tem. Many of these men were members of the Nuclear Intelli-
gence Panel (NIP), the most highly classified nuclear
intelligence group in the U.S. government. NIP had done its
own investigation into the vela test, and had been ordered by
the White House — citing national security — not to discuss it
publicly.

Its finding, openly discussed by NIP members in interviews
with the author, was that a low-yield nuclear weapon most
certainly had been detonated on September 22. They were dis-
mayed by the extent of White House interference in the inves-
tigation. "If it looks like a duck, it's got to be a duck," said
Harold M. Agnew, a NIP member and director of the Los
Alamos laboratory from 1970 to 1979. "But that wasn't an an-
swer Carter liked." The overriding issue, in Agnew's view, was
not whether a nuclear bomb was exploded, but "Who did it?"
Another panel member, Louis H. Roddis, Jr., who played a
major role in America's postwar nuclear weapons develop-
ment, concluded that the South African-Israeli test had taken
place on a barge, or on one of the islands in the South Indian
Ocean archipelago. He, too, expressed anger at Frank Press and
the White House. "There was a real effort on the part of the
administration to downplay it," Roddis said. "They were, in-
deed, concealing the facts — manipulating the facts. Everybody
in New Mexico was convinced that it was a test."

The secret NIP study was directed by Donald M. Kerr, Jr.,
who had served in the Carter administration as acting director

AN ISRAELI TEST 281

of the defense programs at the Department of Energy — he was
the man responsible for America's nuclear bombs. "We were all
insiders — not the kind of guys who'd run off at the mouth in
public," he said, in explaining why his panel members did not
speak out on the issue at the time. u We had no doubt it was a
bomb," Kerr said, adding that in his opinion the Ruina panel's
mandate was driven by politics: u to find a different explana-
tion."

One mystery is why the Ruina panel scientists, all honorable
men, would place themselves in a position where others could
limit what information they could evaluate. The panel mem-
bers had been assured that they would be given all of the rele-
vant intelligence about the satellite, and yet one of the most
important discoveries — uncovered by Ruina himself and
known to the White House — was not made available to them.

Ruina was a director of MIT's Defense and Arms Control
Studies Program and, as such, was involved in late 1979 in the
preparation of a federally funded MIT report that assessed the
foreign availability of critical components for the assembly of
short-range ballistic missiles and compared those components
with those manufactured in the United States. One of Ruina's
three colleagues in preparing the report was an Israeli post-
graduate student. Shortly after Ruina's involvement on the
vela sighting became known at MIT, the Israeli, who said he
had worked on the Israeli nuclear missile systems, began talk-
ing to Ruina about Israel's nuclear capability. "I had the feeling
he [the Israeli] knew an enormous amount," recalled George
Rathjens, the former Carter administration nonproliferation
official who was Ruina's close colleague at MIT. u He knew
about missiles and he knew about guidance systems, and he
talked freely about anything. It was almost as if he had an
ordinary kind of job." Ruina, appropriately, forwarded the Is-
raeli's information in a written report to Spurgeon Keeny at
ACDA. "Some people [in the intelligence community] thought
he was telling it like it was," Keeny said of the Israeli's intelli-
gence. "The message is 'We've got a huge system that's more
sophisticated than you think.' The guy said it [the September 22
flash] was a joint Israeli-South African attempt."

Keeny, confronted with the potentially explosive intelli-

282 THE SAMSON OPTION

gence about what had happened and who had been involved,
remained loyal to the Carter presidency and dismissed the re-
port as nonsense. "I concluded that it was very questionable,"
he acknowledged. "I took it with a grain of salt." His colleagues
in the White House, Keeny said, shared his view that Ruina's
postgraduate student was peddling Israeli disinformation. The
information was not made known to the intelligence commu-
nity or to Ruina's colleagues on the panel. It stayed buried in
the bureaucracy.

There were a few government experts on nonproliferation
policy who were convinced that Frank Press and Spurgeon
Kenny made the right choice in seeking to mitigate the impact
of a South African-Israeli nuclear test. "My belief is that the
conclusion of the Ruina panel was the right conclusion for that
time," one nonproliferation official said. "What do you do?
Look at the issues involved — apartheid, Camp David, NPT, hu-
man rights, dealing with the Indians [on nuclear proliferation],
stopping reprocessing worldwide. You would have do some-
thing strong, especially to Israel, but there was a large segment
of the population that Carter couldn't alienate."

The American intelligence community had done far better
in its reporting on the South African test — the CIA insisted in
internal estimates throughout 1979 and 1980 that there had been
a test — but it basically remained in the dark about the sophisti-
cation of the Israeli nuclear program. In 1980, the Agency pub-
lished another Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE)
on Israeli capability and came up with essentially the same
numbers as Carl Duckett had produced in 1974. Israel, the CIA
said, had manufactured at least twenty and as many as thirty
nuclear warheads. The new estimate, however, was much more
comprehensive than previous studies. The CIA was able to re-
port that the Israelis had upgraded the reactor to increase its
output and also improved the reactor's cooling capacity — clear
signs that a greater amount of plutonium for nuclear weapons
was being generated. There was no longer any doubt, the esti-
mate said, that Israel had completed construction of a chemical
reprocessing plant — but just where and how was not known.
"It was the first serious estimate," one Carter administration
official said, "and it enabled the people in the field to really look

AN ISRAELI TEST 283

out for what Israel had." Even so, the CIA report seriously
underestimated the number of Israeli warheads and the sophis-
tication of its nuclear operation. Sometimes facts were strained
to keep the numbers low. The KH-11, with its brilliant photog-
raphy, had captured an Israeli nuclear missile storage site and
the experts at the National Photographic Interpretation Center
(NPIC) had been able to count ten items that were subse-
quently confirmed as nuclear warheads. No one had ever seen
an Israeli warhead before, and the intelligence community
chose to take the fact that only ten warheads were seen, one
official recalled, "as confirmation of our guesses. We thought
the pictures were extraordinary, but decided that they didn't
add anything new. It was consistent with our numbers."

The 1980 CIA estimate had been ordered by Deputy Under
Secretary of State Joseph S. Nye, Jr., who emerged as the
Carter administration's key — and highly progressive — adviser
on nonproliferation policy. Nye acknowledged that coping
with the Israeli bomb was a low priority under Jimmy Carter.
"There wasn't much that could be done," Nye said. "The Israe-
lis had already done it. It was not something you could make a
demarche [diplomatic protest] about. The question is: do you
make a big hullaballoo about it?"

The answer was no.

21

Israel's Nuclear Spy

For many Americans, Jonathan Jay Pollard is the
American Jew who spied for Israel out of misguided loyalty, a
man who believed that his documents and information would
make Israel more secure in its war against international terror-
ism. When arrested in November 1985, he claimed he had been
turning over secret documents — many of which, he main-
tained, should have been provided to Israel by the United
States — for only fourteen months. The Israeli government
apologized for its spying and insisted that the recruitment of
Pollard was an aberration, an unauthorized "rogue" operation.
Pollard is now serving a life sentence for espionage.

Pollard indeed spied for Israel out of misguided loyalty — and
for money — but none of the other widely held beliefs about the
case is true. He was Israel's first nuclear spy.

Pollard, who began working in 1979 as a civilian employee of
U.S. Navy intelligence, offered to supply Israel with intelli-
gence as early as 1980, but was not recruited as an operative
until the fall of 1981, three years earlier than he and the Israeli
government have admitted. He was then working as an intelli-
gence specialist with the Navy's Field Operations Intelligence
Office. At the height of his activity, in 1984 and 1985, one of his
main assignments was the gathering of American intelligence
relevant to Israel's nuclear targeting of the oil fields and Soviet
military installations in southern Russia, a fact that was hidden
from Justice Department investigators and prosecutors by Is-
raeli officials.

Pollard has insisted in all of his Justice Department interro-
gations that his spying did not begin until July 1984, after a

286 THE SAMSON OPTION

social meeting with Israeli Air Force Colonel Aviem Sella, one
of his heroes, who had been involved in Israel's 1981 bombing of
the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. In fact, Sella was one of the
Israeli Air Force's leading nuclear bombing and targeting ex-
perts and was specifically assigned to serve as Pollard's handler.
The nuclear targeting data supplied by Pollard included top-
secret American intelligence on the location of Soviet military
targets, as well as specific data on the Soviet means for protect-
ing those targets, by concealment or hardening of the sites.
Pollard also gave the Israelis American intelligence on Soviet
air defenses, especially the feared SA-5 surface-to-air missile
system, which was so effective against U.S. B-52S in the Viet-
nam War. Pollard eventually even turned over a copy of the
U.S. intelligence community's annual review of the Soviet stra-
tegic arms system, known as the 11-38 and considered — because
of its appendices dealing with satellite photography, communi-
cation intercepts, radar intelligence, and agent reports — to be
one of the most sensitive documents in the U.S. government.
Pollard also provided Israel with the codes for American diplo-
matic communications, enabling Israel's signals intelligence
agency to intercept cables and backchannel messages to and
from the office of Samuel W. Lewis, the well-informed U.S.
ambassador who had been assigned to Israel in 1977. In all, ac-
cording to federal prosecutors, Pollard provided Israel with
eighteen hundred documents — an estimated 500,000 pages — be-
fore his arrest.

The top political officials of Israel, including Shimon Peres,
Yitzhak Rabin, and Yitzhak Shamir, understood that there was
a high-level source inside the United States. In fact, some of the
most important Pollard documents were retyped and sanitized
by Israeli intelligence officials and then made available to the
Soviet Union as a gesture of Israeli goodwill, at the specific
instructions of Yitzhak Shamir, a longtime advocate of closer
Israeli-Soviet ties. All of this was successfully hidden by the Is-
raeli government after Pollard's arrest and subsequent plea bar-
gain. Israel still continues to depict the Pollard affair as a rogue
operation that was conducted without high-level involvement.

The Pollard story actually begins with the U.S.-Israeli meet-

ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR SPY 287

ings that took place inside the Reagan White House in Septem-
ber 1981, three months after the raid on Osirak. Ariel Sharon,
newly named by Menachem Begin as minister of defense, had
come to Washington with Begin to present a far-reaching
agenda for U.S.-Israeli strategic cooperation. Israel would be-
come America's military partner — and military arm — in the
Middle East and the Persian Gulf, and serve as a depository for
pre-positioned arms and ammunition for American armed
forces. The Israelis' most eagerly awaited meeting took place in
the cabinet room with President Reagan and his top advisers,
including Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of
State Alexander Haig, and National Security Adviser Richard
Allen.

Sam Lewis, as the U.S. ambassador to Israel, also was at the
meeting. "Begin said, 'Mr. President, we share the same view
of the Communist menace. We should formalize our relation-
ship. I suggest a formal alliance.' Reagan said yes," Lewis re-
counted. "Everyone else was shocked. Begin then said, 'Mr.
President, I'd like to ask Minister Sharon to outline to you our
ideas.' Sharon then gave a half-hour outline about how the
American and Israeli strategic interest should be established.
Even Al Haig [a strong supporter of Israel] was turning green.
Dick Allen and the rest of the White House staff were also
turning green. Cap [Weinberger] turned purple. I thought he'd
explode."

Sharon's plan, as outlined at the cabinet-room meeting, also
called for joint use of airfields and Navy ports. One significant
aspect was shared intelligence, including formal Israeli access
to the KH-11 satellite, desperately sought by Israel — as most of
the Americans at the cabinet-room meeting did not understand
— for its nuclear targeting of the Soviet Union.

At the end of Sharon's presentation, Begin turned to the
President, whose reactions were not discernible, and said, ac-
cording to Lewis, " 'Why don't we ask our two defense minis-
ters to work it out.' I thought Cap would faint."

Over the next few months, Weinberger proceeded to "entan-
gle" Sharon in a negotiation, Lewis recalled, that "turned out a
mouse." There would be no joint U.S.-Israeli bases in the Mid-

288 THE SAMSON OPTION

die East, and Israel would not get the access it wanted to Amer-
ican satellite intelligence. Sharon also was told that Israel
would not be permitted a receiving station in Tel Aviv for the
real-time KH-11 photography.

Sharon initially resisted any curtailing of his strategic plan,
and he was ready to fight for it, but Begin, Lewis explained,
was eager "to formalize an alliance with the United States —
especially after the Carter years." Sharon eventually was forced
to accept the watered-down American version, which he vehe-
mently opposed and then had to defend publicly before the
Knesset. He remained loyal to his prime minister and did his
bidding. There were bigger fish to fry.

Over the next few months, Sharon found a way to carry out
his strategic goals without the help of Washington. He led
Israel, with the support of Begin, into an invasion of Lebanon
in an effort to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization
and use Israel's military dominance to change the political
structure of the Middle East. Israel would carry the fight, un-
der Sharon's plan, to the outskirts of Beirut, serving as an anti-
Syrian blocking force while its Lebanese Christian allies, the
Phalangists, cleaned out the city of PLO followers. But the
Phalangists failed to move, and the Israeli Air Force was called
upon to begin the bombing of Beirut. Instead of victory, there
was impasse, as five hundred Israeli soldiers were killed along
with more than ten thousand Palestinians and Lebanese, some
in the shocking massacre at the Palestinian refugee camps in
Sabra and Shatila.

Before carrying out this plan, Sharon needed to control Is-
rael's intelligence services and its "Temple" weapons — the nu-
clear arsenal. Men loyal to him and his strategic goals were put
into key positions. One of the first of the Old Guard to be
shoved out was Binyamin Blumberg, who had served since the
1950s as head of the Office of Special Tasks, widely known in
the early 1980s by its Hebrew acronym, LAKAM. The new
head of LAKAM was a Sharon crony and long-time clandestine
operative named Rafael (Rafi) Eitan, who was then also serving
as Begin's special assistant for counterterrorism. He would
keep both jobs. The ambitious Eitan, known throughout Israel

ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR SPY 289

as "Rafi the stinker,"* had participated in the i960 kidnapping
of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires and was a veteran of many
operations inside the Arab world. He had been forced to re-
sign, nonetheless, from Mossad years earlier, and was bitter
about his stunted career and the failure of Mossad and Israel's
other intelligence agencies to cooperate with his counterterror-
ism office.

Sharon did not hide his political agenda, but publicly spelled it
out on many occasions after leaving the Israeli Army in 1973.
His major goals included the overthrow of King Hussein of
Jordan and the transformation of that country into a Palestin-
ian state, to which Palestinian refugees would be "transferred"
— or driven. A few weeks after his return from Washington in
the early fall of 1981, Sharon called together the senior officer
corps of the Israeli Defense Force and told them for the first
time about his specific plans to put his political agenda into
effect — Israel was going to invade Lebanon. One officer who
was present recalled that he and others were dismayed to hear
Sharon "talk about the need to go to Lebanon and destroy the
'capital of terrorism.' " He talked of the long reach of the IDF
and the need — "not in such words," the officer said — "to
change regimes in the Arab world." The Israeli officer, a for-
mer intelligence specialist, further recalled Sharon's talk about
the "need to change the structure of Israeli intelligence."

"I was sitting with a bunch of brigadiers [generals]," the of-
ficer added, "and I said, 'He's going to take us to war in the
Middle East.' There was nervous laughter all around."

There was one more distinct element in the Sharon briefing:
"He returned [from Washington] anti-American, in a way I'd
never detected before. He gave us his impression of Washing-
ton. He said, 'Americans treat us like an aircraft carrier — a
floating base. They don't understand our real significance:
we're not one aircraft carrier. We are twenty aircraft carriers.
We are much more important than they think. We can take the
Middle East with us whenever we go.' " It was a strange and

* Eitan's nickname arose from his habit of refusing to change his socks while fight-
ing in Israel's War of Independence in 1948.

290 THE SAMSON OPTION

unsettling performance, the officer thought, punctuated by
Sharon's threat to "court-martial" anyone who publicly dis-
cussed what he had said.

On December 15, Sharon, in a speech read by Aharon Yariv
(Sharon was not present) at a conference at the Institute of
Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, suggested that the
United States was indirectly responsible for the growing threat
posed by Moscow in the Middle East: "Soviet advances in the
region have been made possible during the seventies because of
the U.S. strategic passivity in those years and the freedom of
action the Soviet Union has enjoyed. . . ." The increased So-
viet freedom of maneuver in the Middle East and Africa, he
added, "endangers the stability of the region and vital interest
of the free world. I want to stress this point with all possible
emphasis. The great danger to the free world in the eighties
would be to continue [to] indulge in the wishful thinking and
the inaction which have characterized Western attitudes to So-
viet gradual expansion during the last two decades."

Sharon called for Israel to broaden its national security inter-
ests "to include, beyond the Middle East and Red Sea, states
like Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan, and regions such as the Persian
Gulf and central and northern Africa." The new minister of
defense was telling his nation that Israel's national security
now depended on its ability to influence events in a huge area
that stretched from Kenya in the south to Turkey, and from
Mauritania in the west to Pakistan.

There was one sure way to meet the new and expanded So-
viet threat: increase Israeli reliance on its nuclear arsenal. But
that could not be accomplished without KH-11 satellite infor-
mation and other intelligence from the United States.

As Sharon was beginning to redesign Israel's strategic pos-
ture, Washington finally got some hard intelligence on the Is-
raeli nuclear arsenal. It was a "walk-in," an Israeli scientist or
technician who had worked at Dimona and who, as Mordecai
Vanunu would do five years later, had taken some photographs
of the underground storage bunkers there. "It was our first
look inside," one senior intelligence official recalled. "What got
our attention was the fact that he was inside a storage facility."
The photographs showed Israeli warheads individually stored

ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR SPY 291

in heavy lead compartments, very similar to those used in
American nuclear storage igloos: "We actually saw the weapons
lined up there."

The men handling the defector were experts in weapons pro-
duction and knew they were seeing the real thing — thermonu-
clear warheads. The defector told them that Israel had more
than one hundred weapons in storage. "Our thought was 'Holy
shit!' " one involved American recalled. " 'How could we have
been so wrong?' We always said, 'So the Israelis got ten war-
heads? Okay. So what? Anybody can build those.' All of a sud-
den we learned they'd become sophisticated. It blew
everybody's mind. Why do you need a thermonuclear device?
We know twenty KTs [kilotons] will take out Cairo. [Israel]
was more advanced and better than any of our people had pre-
sumed it could be — clean bombs, better warheads. The White
House was briefed, but not in terms that I gave you because it
was a real black eye for the [intelligence] community."

The defector also provided specific data about warhead size
and delivery systems — "we got lots of paper" — that convinced
the Americans that the Israelis were capable of delivering a
nuclear warhead with accuracy. It was clear from the defector's
data, the American said, that the Israelis "can do anything we
or the Soviets can do."

There was the usual disconnect, as there had been with all
Israeli nuclear information since the late 1950s, and the defec-
tor's data was not shared with the State Department's prolifer-
ation experts nor with any of the analysts of Z Division at
Livermore, who were seen as liberals. "You bet your ass it was
kept away from the people at Z Division," the Reagan adminis-
tration official said. "We were paranoid that they'd get it any-
way." The defector's information was left dangling, and those
Americans who should have known the extent and nature of
Israel's nuclear capability did not.

Jonathan Pollard was an unhappy child in South Bend, Indi-
ana. The son of a professor at Notre Dame University, he was
tormented and beaten in grade school for being Jewish. He told
an interviewer that the "turning point" of his life came as a
result of the Six-Day War, when he was thirteen. Israel's vie-

292 THE SAMSON OPTION

tory was "emotionally intoxicating" and triggered his lifelong
obsession with Israeli security, and his fantasies of being part
of it. He told fellow undergraduates at Stanford University
that he had dual citizenship and was a colonel in the Israeli
Army. Bragging and fanciful claims marked his years at
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in
Boston, where he enrolled in 1977. He failed to earn his degree,
and also failed in an attempt to join the CIA. In early 1981,
Pollard sought a job as a defense analyst with the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), one of Washington's
most effective lobbies. AIPAC officials found his bragging
about access to top-secret information inappropriate and
"weird"; one AIPAC official recalled that Pollard's story
sounded "too incredible to be real. So we got rid of him."
There was a feeling that Pollard was part of a "sting" operation
attempting to set up AIPAC. He was clearly trouble.

Pollard also had been offering his services to Israel in 1980
and 1981, but no serious Israeli intelligence official would con-
sider the recruitment of an openly pro-Israel American Jew
who worked for the American intelligence community. There
also was an unwritten law prohibiting the recruitment of any
American Jew, pro-Israel or not. It was just too high-risk.

Pollard's repeated offers to spy for the State of Israel had
unnerved the Israeli intelligence community. "He was turned
back in 1980," a former Mossad operative said. "He's crazy; he's
Jewish — 'Don't take him.' It's like recruiting a Communist to
spy [in the United States] for the KGB. He's automatically a
suspect."

Rafi Eitan, the aggressive new director of LAKAM, decided
to change the rules after the unproductive meetings with the
President and his senior aides in Washington. He agreed with
Sharon that the United States was holding back on intelligence
that was essential to Israeli security — such as the KH-11 pho-
tography. "It was a basic suspicion," recalled one Israeli who
had worked in Mossad with Eitan. "Whatever you get is not
the real stuff — there is even stuff beyond."

Ari Ben-Menashe and his colleagues in the External Rela-
tions Department were also appalled when Eitan recruited Pol-
lard in October 1981. Pollard was a member of a Navy team that

ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR SPY 293

visited Israel that fall to coordinate the exchange of intelligence
with the Israeli Navy. Such visits were routine, and the Israelis
had worked out a novel way of making their counterparts feel
welcome: each American would be invited to an Israeli officer's
home for dinner. "Guess who shows up at Pollard's dinner?"
asked Ben-Menashe. "Rafi. He bagged him [Pollard] in one
night. He didn't even pay him very well — just gives him this
big story." Eitan needed Pollard, Ben-Menashe explained, "to
access papers he already had knowledge of. He needed an ana-
lyst." His recruitment was viewed by military intelligence as
"the worst fucking thing Rafi could have done."

By early 1982, Reuven "Rudi" Yerdor had been promoted to
brigadier general and was in charge of Unit 8200, the Israeli
communications intelligence service. Yerdor was a senior ana-
lyst who worked closely with his counterparts in the American
National Security Agency, traveling to Washington every three
months for liaison meetings. Yerdor's official title was deputy
chief of staff for military intelligence in the Israeli Defense
Force; his immediate superior was Major General Yehoshua
Saguy, the head of Aman (military intelligence) and a deputy to
Sharon who, like Sharon, was dismissed after the Sabra and
Shatila massacre. Every senior officer understood that Saguy, as
head of military intelligence, was directly responsible under
military procedure for briefing the prime minister. But Saguy
was known throughout the upper echelon of the Israeli mili-
tary for his reluctance to challenge Sharon and his willingness
to step aside and permit Sharon to be the main conduit for
military intelligence to Begin and the Israeli cabinet.

Over the 1981-82 New Year's holiday, Yerdor was summoned
by Saguy and given two packets of documents to evaluate:
"Tell me what you think." The first set dealt with highly tech-
nical American intelligence describing a Soviet military system
in the hands of the Arabs. The second documents, far less inter-
esting to Yerdor, were copies of the daily and weekly summa-
ries of worldwide NSA intercepts. "Rudi tells him the
technical stuff is terrific," an Israeli official recalled, "but that
'we'll never get it in this form from the U.S.' As for the in-
tercepts, 'These are less useful.' " Yerdor, as he later explained

294 THE SAMSON OPTION

to a colleague, assumed that his government's intelligence ser-
vices had recruited two people inside the United States — a step
he found deplorable and shortsighted. Eventually, the material
began flowing "in huge quantities," as Yerdor told his friend,
and Yerdor "had to assign a special team to read and analyze
it."

In February, Israel learned that the Soviets had decided to
upgrade the Syrian air defense command and supply it with
three battalions of SA-5S, their most advanced high-altitude
antiaircraft missile. It was the first appearance in the Middle
East of the system. The missiles remained under Soviet control,
but they were assigned to protect Syria's short-range SS-21 mis-
siles, which were capable of striking Israel. They also posed a
threat to Israel's most advanced F-15 and F-16 fighter-bomber
aircraft. It was an alarming escalation. An official request to the
United States for intelligence on the capabilities of the SA-5
was made, but Yerdor was told, as he anticipated, that there
was very little intelligence available on the system; it was too
sensitive. "Two days later," an Israeli friend of Yerdor's said,
"out of the blue sky, Rudi gets the full [U.S.] intelligence on the
SA-5, which makes it clear that it is not as good as we feared."
As for the source of the report, as Yerdor told his colleague,
"this doesn't come" through normal channels.

In mid-May 1982, three weeks before the invasion of Leba-
non, Yerdor's office was handed an astonishing assortment of
invaluable American technical data about the air defense sys-
tems in Syria. It included materials that the U.S. intelligence
community had never supplied to Israel: detailed information
on side-looking radar, electronic maps, and precise frequency
of operations for Syria's SA-6, SA-8, and advanced SA-3 surface-
to-air missile systems. Yerdor again raised questions with Gen-
eral Saguy: "We don't get these materials and if we asked for it,
we wouldn't get it." The Israeli Air Force, utilizing electronic
countermeasures (ECM), would demolish the Syrian Air Force
and destroy more than seventy Syrian missile launchers during
the Lebanon war.

There was much more. "NSA intercepts begin arriving,"
one fully informed Israeli recalled. Rafi Eitan himself showed
up at Yerdor's office and "throws him a daily intercept" dealing

ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR SPY 295

with the diplomatic activities of Sam Lewis. Yerdor told Eitan:
"I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole." Lewis, a career dip-
lomat who would serve as ambassador until 1985, was widely
known as a good friend of Israel but also was strongly opposed
to Ariel Sharon and his policies.

Yerdor had little respect for Eitan, and worried about the
long-range implications of Israeli intelligence activities in the
United States, its best ally. He was convinced Eitan was driven
by his personal ambition and his need to settle old scores with
Yitzhak Hofi, the head of Mossad, and Avraham Shalom, Shin
Beth's director.* He also was convinced, at least until the Pol-
lard scandal became public, that Eitan had recruited two or
more Americans; it wasn't clear how one person could have
had as much access to such a variety of highly classified mate-
rial as was flowing across his desk. Pollard, Yerdor learned
later, had been cleared — despite his openly pro-Israel views —
for access to the most sensitive intelligence in the U.S. govern-
ment, and was using his office in Navy intelligence to place
orders with abandon to classified archives throughout the
Washington area.

Ben-Menashe, like Yerdor, remained convinced — even after
Pollard's arrest and guilty plea — that Eitan had been working
with more than one American. Under normal conditions,
things were hectic in Ben-Menashe's Office of External Rela-
tions: Eitan's LAKAM operations in the United States pro-
duced a steady stream of routinely transferred scientific and
technical documents — similar highly classified U.S. material
had been arriving since the late 1950s, when the agency was set
up. Now, illicitly obtained intelligence was flying so volumi-
nously from LAKAM into Israeli intelligence that a special
code name, jumbo, was added to the security markings already
on the documents. There were strict orders, Ben-Menashe re-
called: "Anything marked jumbo was not supposed to be dis-
cussed with your American counterparts."

* Hofi also was a critic of Ariel Sharon, and had been since they had served together
as paratroopers in the Suez War. His dislike of Sharon manifested itself in unprece-
dented public criticism, reported in the Israeli press after the invasion of Lebanon, in
which Hofi, former chief of staff Mordecai Gur, and two other retired army generals
accused Sharon of insubordination and cowardice under fire on repeated occasions in
the 1950s, including the Suez War.

296 THE SAMSON OPTION

After the Sabra and Shatila massacre, Sharon remained in
Begin's cabinet, but as a minister without portfolio, and Moshe
Arens, a former aeronautical engineer, was named defense
minister. Israeli politics were in more disarray than usual over
the next year; Menachem Begin's wife died in the spring, and a
guilt-ridden Begin, who was in Washington at the time of her
death, fell into a severe depression. He resigned as prime minis-
ter in September 1983 and was replaced by Yitzhak Shamir, a
former senior Mossad operative and conservative member of
the Likud coalition. Neither Labor nor Likud achieved a ma-
jority in the national elections in May 1984. A national unity
coalition was negotiated over the next few months, with
Shimon Peres and Shamir sharing power: Peres would serve as
prime minister and Shamir as foreign minister until September
1986, when they would trade jobs. Yitzhak Rabin would serve
as minister of defense throughout. Peres, Rabin, and Shamir
became known as Israel's ruling troika.

Throughout the turmoil, Rafi Eitan stayed on the job — and
so did Jonathan Pollard. A pattern for reporting was estab-
lished: Pollard's intelligence would be summarized by Eitan
and presented, without analysis or assessment, in a memoran-
dum to the prime minister and minister of defense. By then,
Pollard's material included essential KH-11 imagery as well as
reporting and assessments from U.S. embassies and intelli-
gence operatives inside Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt; such
material is known in the diplomatic community as "third-
party" information, and is never provided to outsiders. The top
leadership, of course, knew what was going on. One former
Israeli intelligence official recalled that Peres and Rabin, both
very sophisticated in the handling of intelligence, were quick
to ask, as the official put it, "Where are we getting this stuff?"
They were told, the Israeli added, that Israeli intelligence " 'has
a penetration into the U.S. intelligence community.' Both men
let it go. No one said: 'Stop it here and now.' " Moshe Arens
was viewed as far less sophisticated than Peres and Rabin about
the nuances of intelligence. He did not raise any questions —
u too dumb to ask," said the Israeli — but he was briefed on the
American penetration by "intelligence guys who wanted to
protect their ass."

ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR SPY 297

After Pollard's arrest, the top leadership denied having any
knowledge of his activities, and two internal commissions au-
thorized by the cabinet and the Knesset that investigated the
scandal also cleared the leadership of any direct knowledge.
Pollard himself seemed to know better. In a pleading filed be-
fore he was given his life sentence in March 1987, he argued
that his Israeli handlers told him that "Israel's dependence
upon a 'special source' " had been mentioned at Israeli cabinet
meetings. He also said that he was routinely provided with lists
of intelligence items wanted; the lists were coordinated and
"prioritized" by the heads of all the various military intelli-
gence services. Much of the material he supplied, he stated, was
satellite photographs and communication intercepts — material
that any Israeli official would have to know "was not being
transferred through official channels." Pollard's handlers in the
United States, who included Aviem Sella by mid-1984, had even
arranged for the Israeli government to provide, via its embassy
in Washington, the most sophisticated photocopying machines
for the reproduction of top-secret documents, including KH-11
satellite photographs. The photocopying machines arrived
with special metal shielding to prevent the interception of elec-
tronic emanations.

Ari Ben-Menashe was aware of Rudi Yerdor's distress about
the spying: "Yerdor was bitching about the fact that Eitan was
compromising Israel's relations with the United States." Ben-
Menashe understood much more: he had personal knowledge
that Yitzhak Shamir, while serving as prime minister in 1983
and 1984, had authorized some of the Pollard material to be
sanitized, retyped, and turned over to Soviet intelligence offi-
cials.

Ben-Menashe, an Iraqi Jew, had close ties to Shamir; in 1987,
two years before his arrest in the United States and subsequent
disaffection from Israel, he left the External Relations Depart-
ment and went to work directly as an intelligence adviser for"
Shamir, then again serving as prime minister. In essence, he
said, he conducted secret operations for Shamir. It was a step
up. Ben-Menashe's ties to Shamir also were familial; his father
served with Shamir in the fervently anti-British Stern Gang

298 THE SAMSON OPTION

before the 1948 War of Independence.* Shamir, who viscerally
disliked the United States, Ben-Menashe said, also "couldn't
stand Begin and his moralistic approach to foreign relations.
The first thing he [Shamir] decides" — upon becoming prime
minister — "without any hesitation is to open the Soviet bloc to
Israel." There was an immediate impact in the intelligence com-
munity, Ben-Menashe added: "A directive to the Mossad rep-
resentative in Bucharest [Romania] to exchange information,
to open things up. Nobody in the intelligence community would
dare to do it without the approval of the prime minister."

The Soviets recognized the overture, Ben-Menashe said, and
late in the year invited Israel to an intelligence conference in
India to discuss the Pakistani nuclear weapons facility at
Kahuta. In early 1984, while still acting prime minister, Shamir
"authorized the exchange of intelligence with the Soviets on
U.S. weapons systems. Suddenly," Ben-Menashe said, "we're
exchanging information." Raw American intelligence was not
handed over directly to the Soviets, but was reworked in an
attempt to minimize the damage to American methods and
agents. The exchange of intelligence paid an immediate divi-
dend, beyond the easing of diplomatic tensions and the in-
creased flow of Soviet immigrants to Israel, Ben-Menashe said.
In late 1984 the Polish government permitted him, as a repre-
sentative of the State of Israel, to travel to Warsaw and negoti-
ate the sale of AK-47S and SA-7S, among other weapons, for
shipment to Iran.

* Yair Stern considered the Jews' fight against the British to be more important than
the world war against the Axis powers. The organization's leaders made a brief at-
tempt in 1940 to broker an agreement with the Third Reich that would permit the
illegal passage to Palestine of Jews from Germany and Europe to continue the fight
against the British, whose war effort was supported by David Ben-Gurion and even the
Irgun, a rival terrorist group that would be taken over by Menachem Begin in 1943.
(Irgun's founder, David Raziel, in fact was serving as a high-ranking officer in British
intelligence and wearing a British uniform when he was killed while on a mission in
Iraq in 1941.) The Stern group, resisting pressure to fight with the Allies, sought direct
negotiations at one point with Otto von Hentig, a representative of the German for-
eign ministry. Nothing came of it. In his memoirs, von Hentig wrote of meeting with a
Jewish delegation (from Stern) that offered to cooperate with the Nazis and, in essence,
go to war against their pro-Allied Zionist compatriots, if Hitler guaranteed the post-
war independence of Jewish Palestine. Similar talks were held by Stern representatives
with Benito Mussolini's Italy, calling on the Italians to provide transit camps and
passage for Jewish refugees, as well as arms, in return for the Stern Gang's collabora-
tion in expanding Italy's influence in the Middle East.

ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR SPY 299

Ben-Menashe's account might seem almost too startling to be
believed, had it not been subsequently amplified by a second
Israeli, who cannot be named. The Israeli said that Pollard ma-
terial was sanitized and dictated to a secretary before being
turned over to the Soviets. Some material was directly pro-
vided to Yevgeni M. Primakov, the Soviet foreign ministry spe-
cialist on the Middle East who met publicly and privately with
Shamir while he was prime minister. Shamir's turning to the
Soviets was consistent with his personal and political beliefs,
the Israeli said. While in Mossad in the 1950s and 1960s, Shamir
was known for his efforts to improve relationships with his
KGB counterparts. He left the intelligence service in the mid-
1960s to join Begin's Herut Party and became speaker of the
Knesset in 1977, when Begin became prime minister. He
worked diligently to develop new ties with the Soviet Union,
which he envisioned as a means of balancing, or offsetting, Is-
rael's traditional reliance on the U.S. "Shamir has always been
fascinated with authority and strong regimes," the Israeli said,
"and very suspicious of democratic governments. He sees the
U.S. as very soft, bourgeois, materialistic and effete."

For Shamir, the Israeli added, the relaying of the Pollard
information to the Soviets was his way of demonstrating that
Israel could be a much more dependable and important collab-
orator in the Middle East than the "fickle" Arabs: "What Arab
could give you this?"

Shamir's unilateral decision to forward the material to the
Soviets is now widely known in leading political circles in
Israel, the Israeli source said. Rabin, who was close to the
United States, went into a virtual "state of shock" upon being
told, but kept his peace. Rabin and Peres, and their political
advisers, understood that Shamir's action, if exposed, would
mean the end of the increasingly shaky Likud coalition. They
also realized, the Israeli source said, that the overall Israeli-
United States relationship "would be at risk. So they kept
quiet." Some officials of Mapam, the left-wing labor party with
close ties to the Soviet bloc, also learned of Shamir's action and
considered leaking that information to the press. The Mapam
leaders "decided it was too explosive."

For his part, Shamir and his principals argued to their col-

300 THE SAMSON OPTION

leagues that his goal was to end the long-standing enmity be-
tween Israel and the Soviet Union and initiate some kind of
strategic cooperation. Shamir also claimed, the Israeli said, that
"he was not doing the United States such a disservice because
he's telling the Soviets that they cannot hide — the Americans
can see and hear everything."

One senior American intelligence official confirmed that there
have been distinct losses of human and technical intelligence
collection ability inside the Soviet Union that have been attrib-
uted, after extensive analysis, to Pollard. "The Israeli objective
[in the handling of Pollard] was to gather what they could and
let the Soviets know that they have a strategic capability — for
their survival and to get their people out [of the Soviet
Union]," one former CIA official said. "Where it hurts us is our
agents being rolled up and our ability to collect technical intel-
ligence being shut down. When the Soviets found out what's
being passed" — in the documents supplied by Pollard to the
Israelis — "they shut down the source."

The Israeli officials most tarnished by the scandal were Rafi
Eitan and Aviem Sella, but Eitan did not suffer financially. He
was subsequently named to a high administrative position with
the Israel Chemicals Company, the largest state-owned enter-
prise in Israel. His surprising appointment was authorized by
none other than Ariel Sharon, who had been named minister of
trade and industry in 1984. As for Sella, he was promoted to
brigadier general after his return from the United States and
assigned as commander of Tel Nof, the site of Israel's nuclear-
ready air force squadron. After American protests, Sella in-
stead was named head of the Israeli Defense Force staff college.
His prospects for further advancement in the air force were
bleak, and Sella retired.

"They all decided Rafi would take the fall," one knowledge-
able American diplomat said, "and Sharon would take care of
him." The American, who conducted his own private inquiry
into the Pollard affair shortly after it became known, said that
the Israeli leadership agreed on a cover-up from the beginning,
despite the huge political differences between the parties.

ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR SPY 301

"There is a national security doctrine in Israel that goes be-
yond everything — protect our government," he added. "If they
had allowed it [the investigation] to go deeper than Rafi, it'd
have blown up the [ruling] coalition. There was nothing to
gain for Israel or the Labor Party by saying anything."

At one point, Rafi Eitan seemed to have second thoughts. He
told an Israeli newspaper in early 1987, "All my actions, includ-
ing the Pollard affair, were carried out with the knowledge of
my superiors. I do not intend to be used as a sacrifice to cover
up the knowledge and responsibility of others." (He changed
his mind within a day, saying to an Israeli radio interviewer
that all of the previously published statements attributed to
him "were not made by me.")

The one aspect of the Pollard story that no one wanted re-
vealed revolved around Aviem Sella. Sella was perhaps Israel's
top air force expert in nuclear targeting and the delivery of
nuclear weapons: it was his job to make sure that Israel's nu-
clear-armed F-16 aircraft could penetrate Soviet air defenses
and reach their targets in the Soviet Union. Earlier in his ca-
reer he had served as an F-4 pilot at Tel Nof, assigned to one of
Israel's "black" — nuclear-capable — squadrons. Ariel Sharon's
broadened view of Israeli national security and the Soviet
threat had led to a dramatic upsurge in nuclear planning and
nuclear targeting. The air force also was responsible for the
advanced Jericho missile system, with its steadily increasing
range. The new missile targets inside the Soviet Union re-
quired increased intelligence, and Sella's mission was to help
Pollard gather the essential information and then evaluate it.
Israel would need the most advanced^ American intelligence on
weather patterns and communication protocols, as well as data
on emergency and alert procedures. Any American knowledge
of the electromagnetic fields that lie between Israel and its
main targets in the Soviet Union also was essential to the
targeting of the Jericho.

Sella's superb skill and knowledge of nuclear targeting
blinded Eitan and the Israeli intelligence community to the
fact that Sella was a pilot who knew nothing about running a
covert operation. When Pollard did get into trouble in late 1985,

302 THE SAMSON OPTION

Sella had nothing to offer him — Sella's main concern was flee-
ing the United States as quickly as possible before he, too, was
arrested and asked a lot of questions that neither he nor the
Israeli government wanted asked.

Those Israelis who know of the Sella mission and the reasons
behind it also believe that Jonathan Pollard had to understand
what he was doing. "Pollard knew it," said one Sella friend.
"Of course he knew it. We didn't need Pollard to bring us
photographs of the PLO headquarters in Tunis." (The Israeli
was referring to Pollard's claim that his intelligence had helped
plan Israel's 1985 bombing of the PLO offices in Tunis.)

Pollard refused to cooperate with the U.S. Attorney's Office in
Washington for six months before finally giving up Sella's
name — and describing what he said was his involvement — as
part of a plea bargain. It is not known whether the prosecutors
in Washington realized at the time of the Pollard plea bargain
that Sella's mission was linked to nuclear intelligence; nor is it
even clear whether anyone in the U.S. government learned it
later. Many of the government's submissions in the case, in-
cluding an extensive presentation by Caspar Weinberger, were
highly classified.

The government acknowledged that few involved in the case
told the truth. It was that awkward situation that led them to
insist that Sella be extradited to the United States. The Israeli
government refused, and Sella was indicted in absentia in
March 1987, in the U.S. District Court in Washington. In June
1990, Sella was declared a fugitive from justice.

Since his retirement, Sella has given friends and colleagues
an account of his involvement that is more credible, but still far
short of the whole story. While in Israel, he was recruited, he
has said, for the job of trying to control Pollard, who was
drowning the Israeli intelligence bureaucracy in documents.
By 1984, when Sella was approached, he had almost completed
his requirement for a Ph.D. in computer science at New York
University; the obvious thought was that his technical training
would be an asset in evaluating and perhaps winnowing down
Pollard's materials. Sella knew, as he told colleagues, that Pol-
lard had been recruited long before 1984 — "the potato was in

ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR SPY 303

the oven," he said to one friend — but he was eager for the as-
signment: running a spy as important as Pollard would make
his own climb to the top inevitable. Before taking the assign-
ment, he checked with his superior, Major General Amos
Lapidot, the air force chief of staff. Lapidot assured him, Sella
has said, that Pollard was not a rogue — and clearance for his
new assignment had been obtained from Yitzhak Rabin, the
minister of defense. Once involved, Sella complained to a
friend that Pollard u was running crazy." The spy, Sella said,
u was giving him things he didn't want and didn't need."

Israel did make one direct attempt, nonetheless, to get the
charges against the young colonel dismissed. In June 1986,
shortly after Pollard gave up Sella's name, Israel hired Leonard
Garment to represent the colonel. Garment, a former aide to
Richard Nixon, was a prominent Washington attorney and pri-
vate counsel to men such as former Attorney General Edwin
Meese III. He also was a strong supporter of Israel, and under
Nixon had occasionally become involved in high-level diplo-
macy.

In late June, Garment flew to Tel Aviv to interview Sella and
speak with Israeli officials. His goal was to try to find some
common ground between Washington and the government of
Israel; to settle the matter before it led to even more damaging
press. Sella's advisers in Israel included Chaim Joseph Zadok, a
former minister of justice and elder statesman of the Labor
Party, and government officials. They proposed that a factual
proffer be offered the U.S. Justice Department, describing Sel-
la's involvement— or lack of involvement. The document
claimed that Sella had done nothing more than meet socially
with Pollard. And Sella said that upon learning over dinner
that Pollard was interested in forwarding documents to Israel,
his only response was to suggest that "Pollard deal directly
with the appropriate agency." The Israeli position, as outlined
to Garment, was that the United States had no case against the
colonel; there wasn't the slightest indication of spying on his
part. Garment saw many state leaders while in Israel and even
had dinner at the home of Shimon Peres. All assured him that
they knew nothing of the Pollard matter.

304 THE SAMSON OPTION

After he had a long meeting with Sella and his brother in Tel
Aviv, Garment began stalling for time; he refused to file the
proffer, saying that it needed more work. Garment returned to
Washington to try again to negotiate a diplomatic solution or
find some way to come up with a document that could get his
client off the hook without obstructing justice. After much
communication back and forth, a six-man Israeli delegation ar-
rived in Washington in August 1986 for a meeting with the
Justice and State departments to resolve the issue. It was no
ordinary group, but clear evidence that the necessity of pro-
tecting Sella reached to the top of the Israeli government. Its
members were Chaim Zadok, the former justice minister; Meir
Rosenne, a former Mossad official who was the Israeli ambassa-
dor to Washington; Rosenne's deputy, Elyakim Rubinstein, one
of the brightest diplomats in Israel, who would become cabinet
secretary; Ram Caspi, a prominent Labor Party lawyer and one
of Shimon Peres's confidants; Avraham Shalom, the former
head of Shin Beth (who had been forced to resign his post in
late June because of cover-up charges in connection with the
Shin Beth killing in 1984 of two Palestinian hijackers while in
custody); and Hanan Bar-on, deputy director general of the
Israeli foreign ministry. Caspi, Shalom, and Bar-on had been
appointed by Peres immediately after Pollard's arrest to
conduct an internal investigation. The three men reported
within a week that Pollard was part of a rogue intelligence-
gathering unit that operated without any government aware-
ness.

Garment invited the six men to his home on the day before
their meeting with Justice and State. They worked for hours
on the proffer. Garment had drafted a memorandum on ob-
struction of justice under U.S. law in an attempt to persuade
the Israelis to stop insisting that he file the proffer as initially
written. The meeting went on past midnight, with Garment's
wife, Suzanne, then a well-known Washington columnist for
the Wall Street Journal, put in charge of typing drafts of the
disputed proffer. At one point, according to a witness (not Gar-
ment), as Garment continued to demur, the inevitable question
came: "What kind of a Jew are you?" Garment was incensed:
"I'm an American citizen, too." What they wanted also made
no sense in terms of protecting the client. Garment decided it

ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR SPY 305

was time to let them know what he knew. He retrieved his
notes of the dinner conversation with Sella and read them to
the group. The Israelis listened quietly and then asked for a
few moments of privacy. When Garment returned, they de-
manded the Sella notes. "These are my notes," Garment told
them. They insisted. Garment held his ground. In that case,
they said, "you're discharged."

Garment lost his temper. He told the men that they would
never get the Sella notes and warned: "If any of you make a
move in my direction, I'll throw you in the pool." Everyone
settled down. It was later agreed that Garment would with-
draw from the case, but do so quietly.

Garment's instinct for self-preservation — he was, after all, a
survivor of the Nixon White House — was at its most acute. He
did not know that Aviem Sella was a leading nuclear targeter,
he did not know that U.S. nuclear targeting secrets were in-
volved in the Pollard affair, and he did not know that three of
the six men who negotiated with him over the Sella proffer had
been involved in an internal investigation and cover-up of the
Pollard scandal. What Garment did know, as he privately in-
formed U.S. Attorney Joseph E. diGenova, who led the Pollard
prosecution, and Mark M. Richard, a deputy assistant attorney
general, was that he was leaving the case because he was not
sure whether his client was Aviem Sella or the Israeli govern-
ment.

With his withdrawal, the Israeli government ended its at-
tempt to protect Sella — in effect, ending Sella's career. Sella,
who retired from the air force in disillusionment and disap-
pointment, remained in Israel, as of mid-1991 a fugitive from
American justice.

22

An Israeli Asset

By October 1986, Jonathan Pollard had yet to be sen-
tenced and there were many in the U.S. intelligence commu-
nity who were convinced that he had one and perhaps many
more accomplices inside the government — men or women who
were supplying Israel with the identification of highly classi-
fied documents that Pollard could then be assigned to retrieve.
The hunt for "Mr. X," as the government called Pollard's al-
leged accomplice, had only begun.

Israel was in the news, and so was spying. The Sunday Times
of London had every reason to anticipate that its October 5,
1986, revelation about Dimona, based on its interviews with
Mordecai Vanunu, would be a sensation. It was the first inside
account of the Israeli nuclear establishment, based on a pub-
licly named source. It also was another story of betrayal involv-
ing Israel: Vanunu and Pollard were primarily driven not by
financial gain (although both accepted money), but by the con-
viction that they were doing the right thing.

The intelligence communities of the world were riveted by
the Sunday Times account. One key American nuclear intelli-
gence official acknowledged that the Vanunu story and Pierre
Pean's i982book on the early French involvement at Dimona
"together presented the evidence that filled in all the question
marks. What we and Z Division didn't know, they provided."

But the press paid little attention. The Sunday Times's com-
petitors on Fleet Street ignored the story, and so did much of
the world's press. The Washington Post and the New York Times
dismissed it in subsequent days with a few paragraphs buried
inside their newspapers, and the major wire services treated it
the same way.

308 THE SAMSON OPTION

Jerry Oplinger, the former White House aide, was appalled
by the failure of the press to understand the importance of
Vanunu. "I couldn't believe those guys. There was nothing
[significant] in the Times, Post, and Wall Street Journal " he said.
"Everybody in the arms control business was amazed that
there was nothing. To me and my close friends, it was really
discouraging. Here is a fascinating and scary story, and even
the press isn't interested."

Peter Hounam, the primary reporter and writer of the
Vanunu story, knew it was the most important of his career.
He expected anything, except apathy. There were not even any
calls from the major newspapers in the United States. It might
have been different, Hounam knew, if Mordecai Vanunu had
been available in person. The Sunday Times had worked out a
careful public relations campaign to help promote the story.
There was to be a news conference on the day of publication
(the newspaper would also announce that Vanunu had agreed
to write a book and that syndication rights had been sold to
Stern, the West German news magazine). But Vanunu had
dropped out of sight the week before, and the Sunday Times was
unable to produce him when he was most needed.

Vanunu, of course, had been duped by Israeli intelligence into
leaving London on September 30 and lured to Rome, where he
was abducted by the Mossad. His decision to walk away from
the London newspaper world had followed publication of
Vanunu's photograph in the Sunday Mirror, Britain's second-
largest tabloid, and a hostile story the week before, on Septem-
ber 28. Israeli officials were quoted claiming that Vanunu had
been fired from Dimona the year before "for attempting to
copy documents." An Israeli press attache added: "There is
not, and there never has been, a scientist by this name working
in nuclear research in Israel. I can confirm that a Mordecai
Vanunu worked as a junior technician in the [Israeli] Atomic
Energy Commission." The Sunday Mirror had attacked the
credibility of Vanunu's photographs, quoting an unidentified
nuclear weapons expert as saying that they could have been
taken in an "egg factory." The Mirror also asked whether

AN ISRAELI ASSET 309

Vanunu's account was u a hoax, or even something more sinis-
ter — a plot to discredit Israel."

The article had been given a lurid headline: "Strange Case of
Israel and the Nuclear Conman." The alleged con man in the
headline was not Vanunu, but Vanunu's agent, Oscar E. Guer-
rero, an opportunistic journalist from Colombia in South
America who had befriended the hapless Vanunu in June,
while he was still in exile in Australia. It was Guerrero who
convinced Vanunu that his story and spectacular photographs
were worth as much as $i million. After failing to interest
Newsweek magazine, Guerrero approached the London Times in
late August, and within a few days, Peter Hounam was in Aus-
tralia, interviewing Vanunu.

Guerrero, apparently fearful that he would be cut out of
Vanunu's agreement with the Sunday Times, also approached
the Sunday Mirror — known for its checkbook journalism — while
Hounam and the Sunday Times's "Insight Team" were prepar-
ing their story. It was that approach that put Ari Ben-Menashe
and the Israeli intelligence community into the picture.

Hounam and the editors at the Sunday Times did not know that
as they worked, Mordecai Vanunu had been compromised to
the Israelis by a Fleet Street colleague named Nicholas Davies,
the foreign editor of the Daily Mirror, sister newspaper of the
Sunday Mirror. Davies's contact was Ari Ben-Menashe. He and
Ben-Menashe had been partners in an international arms sales
firm initially known as Ora Limited, which had operated out of
Davies's London home since 1983. Ora Limited, set up with the
approval of the Israeli government, according to Ben-Menashe,
was designed to get arms flowing into Iran — one of many such
undercover operations around the world. "Davies was my main
backup on all the Iran arms sales," Ben-Menashe said.

Because of his ability to speak Farsi, Ben-Menashe had been
assigned in November 1980 to a small working group inside the
Israeli intelligence community that dealt with Iran, then an
international outcast — like Israel — that needed arms for its war
against Iraq. Ben-Menashe's assignment was to find ways of
getting around the arms embargo. Front companies and credi-
ble people to run them were essential. "Nick had a friend in

310 THE SAMSON OPTION

the Mossad," Ben-Menashe recalled, and there was a casual
meeting in London. Davies accepted an invitation to visit
Israel; it was just a few more steps before he became an Israeli
asset. As a Catholic from northern England, Ben-Menashe said,
Davies was the perfect cutout, a well-dressed charmer with a
strong taste for the good life.

Ben-Menashe's files include hundreds of telexes and other
documents indicating that Ora Limited was actively involved
in arms trafficking with Iran at the highest levels. One 1987
cable, sent to Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, pro-
vided terms for the sale to Iran of four thousand TOW missiles
at a cost of $13,800 each. The cable declared that a British citizen
named Nicholas Davies, as a representative of Ora Limited,
"will have the authority to sign contracts in Iran. . . ." An-
other series of documents revolved around the 1987 efforts of
Ora Limited to set up a communications company in Tucson,
Arizona, to be headed by Robert D. Watters, then a broadcast
engineer at the University of Arizona's television station. Wat-
ters, an expert on satellite voice communications, recalled
many meetings with Ben-Menashe in Tucson and many tele-
phone conversations with Davies in London. "I thought Nick
was the money man," Watters said. "He was there representing
Ora." #

Davies, reached by telephone in London at a number listed
for Ora Limited, acknowledged that he knew Ben-Menashe but
denied any involvement in arms sales: "All I will say is just
keep investigating." Ben-Menashe, he added, was only a news
source: "He's got amazing information." At one time, he said,
he and Ben-Menashe had discussed collaborating on a book, but
the prospective publisher was not interested. Ben-Menashe was
now telling stories about him, Davies said, in revenge. "If any

* Watters wasn't surprised to learn that Davies was in the newspaper business: "He
called from what sounded like a very open room with lots of people talking and type-
writers going. I always wondered where he was." Before agreeing to set up the com-
pany on behalf of Ora Limited, Watters added, he sought to check out Ben-Menashe
and his London firm. Watters was also working under contract on a communications
project for the U. S. Border Control and, through a friend there, was put in touch with
officials of the U. S. Justice Department in Washington. "They said, 'Go ahead. Do
anything he wants. Just keep us informed/ " Watters said.

AN ISRAELI ASSET 31 I

allegations are made in England," Davies warned, "I'll be see-
ing my solicitor."

But, in addition to the cable cited above, Ben-Menashe's alle-
gations were explicitly confirmed by Janet Fielding, a London
actress who was the second wife of Nicholas Davies from 1982
to 1985. She said that she knew that Davies was selling arms in
partnership with Ben-Menashe at the same time he was serving
as foreign editor of the Daily Mirror. Eventually, she said in a
telephone interview, she became "appalled" by her then hus-
band's activities. "Nick would try to tell me stuff [about the
arms sales] and I said I didn't want to know. I left him because
of it."

She had first known him as a journalist who had written
critically of the massacres at Sabra and Shatila during the 1982
Israeli invasion of Lebanon: "And then he gets involved with
Ari." She especially recalled, she said, serving Ben-Menashe
lunch at her home in late 1984: "I'd gone to the trouble of get-
ting kosher salami and Ari didn't like it."

Asked whether she knew that Ben-Menashe was an Israeli
intelligence operative, Fielding responded, "It wasn't difficult
to put two and two together. Do you think I'm bloody stupid? I
shut my ears and walked" — out of the marriage.

Soon after Guerrero approached the Sunday Mirror, Ben-
Menashe said, Davies learned of it and immediately telephoned
him in Israel to tip him off: "The next I knew I was on the
night plane to London. Some shithead from Colombia was ped-
dling the pictures in London. Nick arranged a meeting with
this 'hot' American journalist — me." At the meeting, Guerrero,
eager for another sale, displayed some of Vanunu's color photo-
graphs. Ben-Menashe's problem, he recalled, was that he sim-
ply had no idea what they showed or whether they were
significant. They would have to be seen, he knew, by experts in
Israel. "I told him I needed copies." Guerrero balked. "I said,
'You want some money? I have to know they're real.' I told him
Nick will vouch for me." Guerrero turned over copies of three
Vanunu photographs.

312 THE SAMSON OPTION

The fact of Vanunu's defection had been known for weeks by
the top political leadership of Israel. There had been discus-
sions, Ben-Menashe said, about what to do, with some officials
urging Vanunu's assassination and the intelligence community
recommending that he be ignored. It wasn't clear how much
Vanunu knew or how much damage could be caused by a low-
level Moroccan-born technician. It was Shimon Peres who
ruled out assassination, Ben-Menashe said: "Peres said, 'Let's
make him an example.' "

Vanunu's photographs, which had been shipped by Ben-
Menashe directly to Israel — he was under strict orders to stay
away from the Israeli embassy — created havoc. Ben-Menashe
was told the next morning, "They're real." He was also told
that Peres was personally handling the crisis. Ben-Menashe
learned one of the reasons a few days later: there was fear that
Vanunu knew that Israel had deployed nuclear land mines
along the Golan Heights — and that he would talk about it. The
land mines had been put in place in the early 1980s, when
Vanunu was still working at Dimona.

That news propelled a major disinformation effort by Israel,
Ben-Menashe said: "To stop every story. To put out the word
that it's bullshit." Davies did his part at the Sunday Mirror, Ben-
Menashe said, working directly with Robert Maxwell, pub-
lisher of the Mirror Group newspapers, the largest group of
popular tabloids in Great Britain, which included the Daily
and Sunday Mirror. Davies provided the framework for the Sep-
tember 28 Vanunu story, Ben-Menashe recalled, and then "it
went to Maxwell. He was dealing directly with Maxwell." At
one point, Ben-Menashe said, Davies set up a meeting for Ben-
Menashe with Maxwell at his ninth-floor office. Maxwell made
it clear at the brief session, Ben-Menashe recalled, that he un-
derstood what was to be done about the Vanunu story. "I know
what has to happen," Maxwell told Ben-Menashe. "I have al-
ready spoken to your bosses."

Maxwell, Rupert Murdoch's fellow press baron and major
competitor, was known for his closeness to Israel's top leader-
ship. He subsequently became an owner of Maariv, the Israeli
daily newspaper, and also briefly was owner of the Cytex Cor-

AN ISRAELI ASSET 313

poration, an Israeli-based supplier of high-tech printing equip-
ment, whose senior executives included Yair Shamir, a former
air force colonel and the son of Yitzhak Shamir.

The Sunday Mirror reporting and editing team that handled
the Vanunu story had no contact with Nicholas Davies, whom
they knew only as the foreign editor of the Daily Mirror. What
the reporters did know, however, was that the story that ap-
peared under their names had been dictated in tone and con-
tent by the newspaper's editor, Michael Malloy. There were
heated debates with the Mirror's reporting team, led by Tony
Frost, insisting that the real story was not about Guerrero and
his antics, as Malloy wanted to make it, but about the Vanunu
photographs. Whatever Guerrero's problems, the Vanunu pho-
tographs could be real. If so, it was one hell of a story. The
reporters recommended that the photographs be "splashed"
across the front of the newspaper, with the accompanying
story raising questions about their authenticity. But Malloy
wanted none of Vanunu's photographs published and insisted
on holding up Vanunu, and the Sunday Times, to ridicule.

The crunch came on the Thursday before publication, when
Frost and a colleague named Mark Souster were ordered by
Malloy to take the Vanunu photographs and data to the Israeli
embassy. John C. Parker, then Malloy's senior deputy, under-
stood that Maxwell himself had given the order. Parker and his
colleagues were extremely concerned about what going to the
embassy meant for Vanunu. It could lead to his arrest and even
put his life in danger from assassination. "It's an editor's pre-
rogative," Malloy told them, and the newspaper's staff did his
bidding.

Frost knew that he and his colleagues had not participated in
journalism's finest hour: "I was hoping one day that the full
story would come out on this," he said.

Peter J. Miller, the Sunday Mirror's senior news editor, who
was fired by Maxwell in 1990 (Frost also was dismissed in the
dispute), angrily complained that the newspaper's treatment of
the Vanunu story had been turned around because of pressure
from above. "The line we were instructed to take," Miller said,
"cost the Sunday Mirror a world-beating exclusive."*

* Miller was fired in November 1990, after he was accused initially of neglect of
duties and later with conspiring with another Sunday Mirror employee to sell a photo-

314 THE SAMSON OPTION

Parker, who left the Mirror in 1988 to publish King of Fools, a
best-selling biography of the Duke of Windsor, also expressed
bitterness over the handling of the Vanunu story. "The Sunday
Mirror had the biggest story in the world at that time and it
collapsed because of the line they took," he said. "It was a clas-
sic exercise by the Israelis in disinformation."

Malloy, who was forced out in 1988 as editor of the Sunday
Mirror, acknowledged that he had discussed the handling of the
Vanunu story with Maxwell, but said there was "nothing sinis-
ter or strange about Maxwell's involvement. I told Bob about it
because of his involvement with Israel. He does have powerful
friends there and close links." Told of the complaints by
Parker, Miller, and Frost, Malloy said that he himself had mis-
judged the importance of the Vanunu photographs. "My news
instincts were bad," Malloy, now a free-lance writer and novel-
ist, explained. "It sounded to me like a setup." It was Maxwell,
however, Malloy recalled, who ordered the staff to take the
photographs to the Israeli embassy. "I think he [Maxwell] prob-
ably said, 'Oh, let the Israelis have a look at it,' and that's how it
came about. It wasn't as if we were handing them to a foreign
enemy."

Malloy also said he could not deny that he had invoked Max-
well's name in telling Miller, Parker, and Frost how to handle
the story. Although he could not specifically recall doing so in
the Vanunu case, Malloy said, "generally Maxwell was given a
draft [of stories] in advance." Malloy also acknowledged that it
was possible that Maxwell was not keeping him fully informed
of his independent contacts, with the Israelis or others on the
Mirror newspaper group, such as Nicholas Davies.* Maxwell

graph of Lady Diana, the Princess of Wales, dancing with John Travolta, the American
actor, to rival publications after it had been printed in the Mirror. Miller, who was the
publisher of a local London newspaper and magazine when interviewed, contested the
firing before Britain's Industrial Tribunal, and in June 1991 won his case against Max-
well and the Sunday Mirror. The Tribunal, as of August 1991, was considering how
much compensation to award Miller. Frost, now the deputy editor of the Sunday Sun in
Newcastle, England, was also dismissed by Maxwell. He did not contest Maxwell's
action against him.

* Malloy said he knew nothing of Davies' ties to the Israelis but depicted him as
serving as "sort of equerry for Maxwell. When Bob travels, he always has an entourage
and Nick became part of that entourage." Davies, Malloy added, "always was a kind of
entrepreneurial character — selling and importing on the side."

AN ISRAELI ASSET 315

was in intelligence during the war," Malloy explained, "so he
can be extremely disingenuous. So if he did know more than I
knew, it's quite possible he wouldn't tell me."

Handling Robert Maxwell's Sunday Mirror was one thing,
but the Sunday Times was still known to be at work on the
Vanunu story — and the Israeli intelligence community had no
clout at the top at the Times. "Those guys were not us," Ben-
Menashe said. "They wanted the real story." The next step was
to find Vanunu, still hiding out in London, and somehow man-
age to get him out of England. "We didn't know what hotel he
was staying at," Ben-Menashe added. "We asked Nick to ask
around and find out where the fuck he was. Nick did it, and we
spotted him." Within days, the lonely Vanunu, who did not
know about the land mines, Ben-Menashe said, was entrapped
by the Mossad's Cindy Hanin Bentov and en route to Rome.

Ben-Menashe's involvement in the incident ended at that
point, but he maintained his business ties with Davies until his
arrest in New York in 1989. He initially sought to keep secret
Davies's role in the ongoing arms sales, Ben-Menashe said, as
any good intelligence operative would, but he decided to talk
after Davies made no move to come to his defense. Davies, in
fact, retained a New York attorney in a successful effort to
resist being deposed by Ben-Menashe's attorneys in the case.

If he had chosen to do so, Ben-Menashe claimed, Davies
could have proven to the American prosecutors that the sale of
the C-130S to Iran had been sanctioned by the Israeli govern-
ment.

Epilogue

For the men in the White House, the first day of President
George Bush's Persian Gulf War couldn't have gone better. As
America — and the world — watched on television, U.S. cruise
missiles and Air Force and Navy planes struck their targets in
downtown Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq with precision. War
seemed almost too easy. But the euphoria disappeared on the
second day, as the Iraqi army carried out Saddam Hussein's
pre-war pledge and fired eight Scud missiles at Israel from
launchers that had supposedly been destroyed in the first hours
of the war. Two Scuds landed in Tel Aviv and another near
Haifa, and the world listened with dread to the initial, and
erroneous, newscasts reporting that the Scud warheads con-
tained nerve gas. Frightened Israelis, wearing gas masks, hud-
dled in specially sealed above-ground rooms, waiting out the
Iraqi bombardment; the streets below, as seen on television,
were eerily quiet.

A senior American defense official rushed to Israel with a
promise of future support, but it seemed inevitable that Israel
would enter the Gulf War by sending its air force and its spe-
cially trained commando units into western Iraq, where the
Scuds were located.

Adding to the tension was the fact that American intelli-
gence had miscalculated in its predictions that Iraq had a lim-
ited number of Scud warheads and launchers — some estimates
before the war put that number at fewer than 20. It had been
thought that Iraq could launch its Scuds only from fixed
launcher sites or from mobile launchers — no one had foreseen
that Saddam Hussein's troops would convert a newly pur-
chased fleet of flatbed trucks into makeshift launching pads.

318 EPILOGUE

General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the American commander,
eventually acknowledged that Iraq could have as many as fif-
teen battalions of launchers, each supplied with fifteen Scuds —
a total of 225 missiles.

There was another element involved in those first hours, not
known to the public but detected by an American satellite mak-
ing its ninety-six-minute orbit around the earth. The satellite
saw that Shamir had responded to the Scud barrage by order-
ing mobile missile launchers armed with nuclear weapons
moved into the open and deployed facing Iraq, ready to launch
on command. American intelligence picked up other signs in-
dicating that Israel had gone on a full-scale nuclear alert that
would remain in effect for weeks. No one in the Bush adminis-
tration knew just what Israel would do if a Scud armed with
nerve gas struck a crowded apartment building, killing thou-
sands. All George Bush could offer Shamir, besides money and
more batteries of Patriot missiles, was American assurance that
the Iraqi Scud launcher sites would be made a priority target of
the air war.

Such guarantees meant little; no Jews had been killed by
poison gas since Treblinka and Auschwitz, and Israel, after all,
had built its bomb so it would never have to depend on the
goodwill of others when the lives of Jews were being threat-
ened.

The escalation didn't happen, however; the conventionally
armed Scud warheads caused — amazingly — minimal casualties,
and military and financial commitments from the Bush admin-
istration rolled in. The government of Prime Minister Yitzhak
Shamir received international plaudits for its restraint.

American officials were full of private assurances for months
after the crisis that things had been under control; newsmen
were told that Israel, recognizing the enormous consequence of
a nuclear strike, would not have launched its missiles at Bagh-
dad.

The fact is, of course, that no one in America — not even its
President — could have dissuaded Shamir and his advisers from
ordering any military actions they deemed essential to the pro-
tection of their nation. Such sovereignty isn't new or unusual.
What is unusual is that one of America's most important allies

EPILOGUE 319

— a beleaguered ally surrounded by avowed enemies constantly
threatening war — has secretly amassed a large nuclear arsenal
while Washington looked the other way.

America's policy toward the Israeli arsenal, as we have seen
in this book, was not just one of benign neglect: it was a con-
scious policy of ignoring reality.

By the mid-1980s, the technicians at Dimona had manufac-
tured hundreds of low-yield neutron warheads capable of de-
stroying large numbers of enemy troops with minimal
property damage. The size and sophistication of Israel's arsenal
allows men such as Ariel Sharon to dream of redrawing the
map of the Middle East aided by the implicit threat of nuclear
force. Israel also has been an exporter of nuclear technology
and has collaborated on nuclear weapons research with other
nations, including South Africa.

In September 1988, Israel launched its first satellite into orbit,
bringing it a huge step closer to intercontinental missiles and a
satellite intelligence capability — no more Jonathan Pollards
would be needed to steal America's secrets. Scientists at Z Divi-
sion concluded that the rocket booster that launched the Israeli
satellite produced enough thrust to deliver a small nuclear war-
head to a target more than six thousand miles away. Israeli
physicists are still at the cutting edge in weapons technology
and involved, as are their American and Soviet counterparts, in
intensive research into nuclear bomb-pumped X-ray lasers, hy-
drodynamics, and radiation transport — the next generation of
weaponry.

None of this has ever been discussed in the open in Israel, or
in the Knesset. Meanwhile, Israeli field commanders have ac-
cepted nuclear artillery shells and land mines as battlefield ne-
cessities: another means to an end. The basic target of Israel's
nuclear arsenal has been and will continue to be its Arab neigh-
bors. Should war break out in the Middle East again and
should the Syrians and the Egyptians break through again as
they did in 1973, or should any Arab nation fire missiles again at
Israel, as Iraq did, a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable ex-
cept as a last resort, would now be a strong probability. Never
again.

The Samson Option is no longer the only nuclear option
available to Israel.

Acknowledgments

No author could have been blessed with a more intelligent,
enthusiastic, or caring researcher, fact checker, editor, and col-
league than Max Friedman of National Public Radio, an Ober-
lin College graduate who worked closely with me on this book
for the past three years. He is a wonderful journalist.

Benjamin Frankel of Washington, a political scientist and an
expert on national security, provided a seemingly unending
tutelage on Israeli politics, history, and sociology.

Thomas W. Graham of the University of California at San
Diego served as an in-house expert on the history of U.S. non-
proliferation efforts, a subject few know better.

Thomas B. Cochran and Robert S. Norris graciously gave me
a series of ad hoc, but expert, seminars on nuclear weapons and
how they are made. Cochran is senior scientist and Norris is
senior analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council in
Washington.

My longtime editor and friend Robert Loomis of Random
House cared about this book and what it said, and how it said
it. His help was essential. Esther Newberg, my agent, knew
when to crack the whip and when to share a joke. It is a delight
to be represented by someone of her integrity and intelligence.
My thanks to Heather Shroder for her help in getting this book
to foreign publishers.

Thanks, too, to Mrs. Miriam Borgenicht Klein for her help.

Notes

Few books have been written specifically on Israel's nuclear arsenal. The first
and most politically insightful is Israel and Nuclear Weapons, by Fuad Jabber
(published for the International Institute for Strategic Studies by Chatto &
Windus, London, 1971). See also Israels Nuclear Arsenal, by Peter Pry (West-
view Press, Boulder, Colo., 1984); Israeli Nuclear Deterrence, by Shai Feldman
(Columbia University Press, New York, 1982), and Dimona: The Third Temple?
by Mark GafFney (Amana Books, Brattleboro, Vt., 1989). The best reference
work on the status of world proliferation is compiled and written by Leonard
S. Spector, of the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, who publishes peri-
odic updates. His most recent (with Jacqueline R. Smith) is Nuclear Ambitions:
The Spread of Nuclear Weapons, ip8p-ippo (Westview Press, Boulder, Colo., 1990).
And for the most recent Israeli view of the nuclear debate, see "Opaque
Nuclear Proliferation," by Avner Cohen and Benjamin Frankel, Journal of
Strategic Studies, Vol. 13, No. 3, September 1990, beginning at page 14.

1. A Secret Agreement

A full description of America's satellite capability and hardware, including
an account of the KH-n, can be found in American Espionage and the Soviet
Target, by Jeffrey Richelson (William Morrow, New York, 1987). The first
journalistic report on the CIA's kk mountain activities can be found in Dan-
gerous Liaison, by Andrew and Leslie Cockburn (HarperCollins, New York,
1991); see Chapter 5, "Dirty Work on the Mountain." For an excellent discus-
sion of President Jimmy Carter's troubles with the CIA's intelligence in Iran,
see All Fall Down, by Gary Sick (Penguin Books, New York, 1985). There were
many newspaper and magazine articles on the Geoffrey Prime spy scandal in
Britain; see, for example, "The Treason of Geoffrey Prime," Economist, No-
vember 13, 1982, page 63. William Kampiles's travails similarly were fully re-
ported. Richard Allen was first interviewed for this book on May 19, 1989, and
many times thereafter. For a good account of the internal feuding in Israel
over the bombing of the Iraqi reactor at Osirak, see Israels Secret Wars, by Ian
Black and Benny Morris (Grove Weidenfeld, New York, 1991), beginning at
page 332. There have been many popular accounts of the raid itself; see, for
example, Two Minutes over Baghdad, by Amos Perlmutter, Michael Handel,
and Uri Bar-Joseph (Corgi Books, London, 1982). Also see First Strike, by
Shlomo Nakdimon (Summit Books, New York, 1987, originally published by
Yediot Ahronot/Eidanim, Tel Aviv, 1986). Menachem Begin's reaction to the
raid can be found in the Israeli press for June 1982; see "Begin: Secret Atom

324 NOTES

Bunker Also Was Destroyed in Raid ," Jerusalem Post, June 12, 1981, page 1. The
cited State Department study on Mozambique is entitled "Summary of
Mozambican Refugee Accounts of Principally Conflict-Related Experience in
Mozambique," submitted to the State Department in April 1988 by Robert
Gersony, a consultant to the Bureau for Refugee Programs. William Bader
was interviewed in Washington on June 3, 1991.

2. The Scientist

Not surprisingly, very little has been written about Ernst Bergmann. He is
discussed in Chaim Weizmann: A Biography by Several Hands, in a chapter by
R.H.S. Crossman, "The Prisoner of Rehovot," at page 333 (Atheneum, New
York, 1963). See also From These Men, by Shimon Peres (Wyndham Books, New
York, 1979), pages 185-201. An excellent magazine account of Bergmann's ca-
reer was published in the weekly Tel Aviv Magazine of Yediot Ahronot, Israel's
largest newspaper, in March 1991: "Who Forgot the Father of the Israeli
Atom, and Why?" by Roni Hadar. The article, because of Israeli censorship,
only hints at Bergmann's important role. The best biography (in English) of
David Ben-Gurion is Ben-Gurion, by Michael Bar-Zohar (Adama Books, New
York, 1977). Bar-Zohar is cited throughout the early portions of this book. The
diaries of Moshe Sharett, Personal Diary, in Hebrew (Maariv, Tel Aviv, 1980)
have been translated only in part. There are eight volumes in the original.
Details of the early announcements of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commis-
sion can be found in Jabber and Pry. Bergmann's 1954 speech can be found in
the Daily Report of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service for Tuesday,
November 23, 1954, No. 227. Other details on Israel's early nuclear research
program were provided by United Nations Ambassador Abba Eban in a
speech on November 15, 1954; see page 335 et seq. of the official record for the
General Assembly, Ninth Session. Ben-Gurion's remark about Israel being a
"small spot" was cited in "The Hidden Debate," by Uri Bar-Joseph, Journal of
Strategic Studies, June 1982, at page 212. Bar-Joseph's is one of many excellent
scholarly articles on the Suez Crisis; see also "Israel's Relations with the
Arabs," by Avi Shlaim, Middle East Journal, Spring 1983, beginning at page 180.
Shlomo Aronson, an Israeli political scientist, has analyzed Israeli foreign
policy in terms of its nuclear potential: see Conflict and Bargaining in the Middle
East (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1978). The death of Aharon
Katzir-Katchalsky was reported in the Jerusalem Post, June 1, 1972, "Leading
Scientist Killed," page 3. Bergmann's quote about two atomic energies can be
found in "Israelis Honor Atom Scientist," by James Feron, New York Times,
May 14, 1966. Herman Mark was interviewed December 14, 1990, in Austin,
Texas, and by telephone many times thereafter. Abe Feinberg was initially
interviewed in New York on April 20, 1989, and many times in person and on
the telephone thereafter. Bergmann's cited interview in 1969 was published in
part in A Tacit Alliance, an excellent doctoral study of French-Israeli military
ties by Sylvia K. Crosbie (Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1974).
Bertrand Goldschmidt was interviewed in Paris on November 24, 1990. More
details can be found in his memoir, Atomic Rivals (Rutgers University Press,
New Brunswick, N.J., 1990), and his history of nuclear energy, The Atomic
Complex (American Nuclear Society, La Grange Park, 111., 1980).

NOTES 325

3. The French Connection

The best account of France's role in the Israeli bomb is the cited Les deux
bombes, by Pierre Pean (Fayard, Paris, 1982). The announcement of the Cana-
dian-Indian reactor can be found in "Canada to Help Build Atom Research
Reactor for India," by Grey Hamilton, Toronto Globe and Mail, April 30, 1956.
Basic sources for the period leading up to the Suez war include the diaries of
Ben-Gurion and Sharett, as well as The Eisenhower Diaries, Robert Ferrell,
editor (W. W. Norton, New York, 1981), and de Gaulle's Memoirs of Hope (Si-
mon & Schuster, New York, 1970). See also Diary of the Sinai Campaign, by
Moshe Dayan (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London, 1965), and Suez, by Hugh
Thomas (Harper & Row, New York, 1966). The Bulganin threat during the
Suez War can be found in contemporary newspaper accounts; especially see
"Soviet Protests Canal Blockade," New York Times, November 5, 1956. The
cited Peres biography is Shimon Peres, by Matti Golan (St. Martin's Press,
New York, 1982). The French reactor at Marcoule is described in Mechanical
Engineering Magazine, November 1959, at page 60 (no mention is made of its
weapons capability, however). For the French view of the nuclear issue, see
The Balance of Terror, by Pierre Gallois (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1961), page
137 et seq.

4. First Knowledge

The best account of the U-2 can be found in Mayday, by Michael R.
Beschloss (Harper & Row, New York, 1986). Arthur Lundahl was interviewed
in Bethesda, Maryland, on June 19, 1989, and many times by telephone after-
ward. Dino Brugioni was interviewed dozens of times by telephone at his
home in Hartwood, Virginia, beginning on July 5, 1989. His account of the
Auschwitz findings (cited in Chapter 7) can be found in "The Serendipity
Effect of Aerial Reconnaissance," by Dino A. Brugioni, Interdisciplinary Science
Reviews, Vol. 124, No. 1, 1989. America's difficulties in locating Soviet nuclear
targets before the advent of the U-2 are described by David A. Rosenberg in
"The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945-
1960," International Security, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Spring 1983), pages 3-71. Andrew
Goodpaster was interviewed by telephone in Washington on January 11, 1991.

5. Internal Wars

See Jabber for the generally held and mistaken view of the early resigna-
tions of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, as well as Every Spy a Prince,
by Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1990), page 69.
Raviv and Melman, however, mention Binyamin Blumberg's important and
early role in the Israeli bomb on the same page. Black and Morris also deal
with Blumberg's little-known history. Ian Smart was interviewed in New
York on July 23, 1989. He was then living in London. Thomas Graham was
interviewed in Washington on May 15, 1989; his cited article is "The Econom-
ics of Producing Nuclear Weapons in Nth Countries," by Thomas W. Gra-
ham, in Strategies for Managing Nuclear Proliferation, edited by D. L. Brito, M.
D. Intriligator, and A. E. Wick (Lexington Books, Lexington, Mass., 1983).
Peres's boast about raising money can be found in the previously cited week-
end magazine of Yediot Ahronot.

326 NOTES

6. Going Public

John Finney was interviewed in Washington on April 18, 1989. The cited
article was "U.S. Hears Israel Moves Toward A-Bomb Potential," New York
Times, December 19, i960, page 1. McCone's resignation and TV appearance
were also on page 1 that day: "McCone to Resign as AEC Member." The cited
Buchwald column (reprinted in part, with his permission) was published
January 10, 1961, in the New York Herald-Tribune, "The Smashing Tailors of
Beersheba." Walter Elder was interviewed in his suburban Virginia home on
August 28, 1989, and many times by telephone thereafter. Armand Meyer was
interviewed in Rosslyn, Virginia, on June 15, 1990. The cited Herter state-
ment can be found in The Alliance, by Richard J. Barnet (Simon & Schuster,
New York, 1983), page 179. Philip Farley was interviewed in Palo Alto, Califor-
nia, on October 30, 1989. Chapman Pincher was interviewed by telephone on
March 28, 1991; the cited article is "Israel May Be Making an A-Bomb," Lon-
don Daily Express, December 16, i960, page 2. Myron Kratzer was interviewed
in Washington in June 1989, and by telephone thereafter. The cited Freedom
of Information documents are in the author's possession. Christian Herter's
testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee can be found in Vol.
XIII, Part I, of the published Executive Sessions of the Senate Foreign Rela-
tions Committee (Historical Series), made public April 1984.

7. Dual Loyalty

The Strauss biography is No Sacrifice Too Great, by Richard Pfau (Univer-
sity Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1984.) There are many accounts of Op-
penheimer's travails before the AEC; see The Oppenheimer Hearing, by John
Major (Batsford, London, 1971). Strauss's test ban testimony was cited in The
Glory and the Dream, by William Manchester (Little, Brown, Boston, 1973),
page 985. Carl Kaysen was interviewed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on No-
vember n, 1989, and thereafter by telephone. William L. Strauss was inter-
viewed by telephone on April 3, 1991; Alice Strauss was interviewed by
telephone on May 6, 1991. Algie Wells was interviewed by telephone on
March 29, 1991.

8. A Presidential Struggle

Abe Feinberg's role in presidential politics and fund-raising was initially
reported in an unpublished dissertation, "Ethnic Linkage and Foreign Pol-
icy," by Etta Zablocki, Columbia University, 1983 (available through UMI
dissertation information service, Ann Arbor, Mich.). Similar material was
published in The Lobby, by Edward Tivnan (Simon & Schuster, New York,
1987), and Truman and Israel, by Michael J. Cohen (University of California
Press, Berkeley, 1990). None of the accounts discusses Feinberg's relationship
with the Israeli nuclear program. Clark Clifford was interviewed about Fein-
berg on April 8, 1991. Abraham RibicofF was interviewed by telephone on
November 5, 1990. Ben Bradlee and Arthur Schlesinger discussed President
Kennedy on April 9, 1991. Kennedy's comments about campaign financing
were made on October 4, 1961, according to Facts on File. A good account of
Kennedy's efforts on campaign financing can be found in Congressional
Quarterly's "Congress and the Nation 1965-1968," Vol. II, "Political Finances,"
p. 444. Myer Feldman was interviewed in Washington on June 13, 1989, and
many times thereafter. Jerome Weisner was interviewed by telephone on

NOTES 327

June 27, 1991. Robert Komer was interviewed in Washington on April 3, 1989,
and two times thereafter. William Crawford was interviewed in suburban
Maryland on May 3, 1990. Israel's diversion of the Norwegian heavy water
has been thoroughly researched and reported by Gary Milhollin, director of
the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control in Washington. Milhollin
was the first to expose the issue, and has been more than generous in sharing
his files and research. The explanation for the lack of a Shavit I can be found
in "Publicity on Rocket Explained in Israel," New York Times, June 10, 1961.
Paul Nitze was interviewed on October 9, 1990. Robert McNamara's cryptic
conversation with the author took place on January 11, 1991. The more logical
account of why the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission fell apart in the late
1950s was supplied by Yuval Neeman, minister of energy, in a conversation in
Washington on April 15, 1991. Neeman would not discuss any current issues
relating to Israel's nuclear capabilities. Floyd Culler was interviewed on No-
vember 30, 1989, in Palo Alto, California, and later by telephone. Phillips
Talbot was interviewed briefly by telephone on April 8, 1991.

9. Years of Pressure

The declassified memorandum of the Kennedy talk with Golda Meir is
available from the JFK Library in Boston and also can be found in President
Kennedy s Policy Toward the Arab States and Israel, by Mordechai Gazit (Shiloah
Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University, 1983),
page 108. The Gazit book provides invaluable background on Israeli policy in
the Kennedy period. Much detail about Ben-Gurion's attitude and the history
of that period, it should be noted again, comes from Michael Bar-Zohar's
abridged biography. Daniel Ellsberg was interviewed in Washington on
March 20, 1989. The most complete summary of Johnson's early ties to Ameri-
can Jews can be found in "Prologue," by Louis S. Gomolak, unpublished
doctoral thesis (University of Texas, 1989), available through UMI disserta-
tion information service.

10. The Samson Option

Excellent work on this period has been done by Shlomo Aronson, the
Israeli political scientist and advocate of the deterrent value of Israel's nu-
clear arsenal. Moshe Dayan's Maariv article was summarized April 13, 1963, in
the New York Times, "Israelis Warned on Arms Lag." Ben-Gurion's letter to
the Times was published November 20, 1963. Theodore Taylor's paper was
entitled "Can Nuclear Weapons Be Developed Without Full Testing?" It was
a lecture given on December 11, 1988, at a workshop on Verification of Nuclear
and Conventional Arms Reductions, Robin Brook Centre, St. Bartholomew's
Medical College, London. The text of the lecture, with additional material, is
reproduced in Theodore B. Taylor, "Nuclear Tests and Nuclear Weapons,"
in Benjamin Frankel, ed., Opaque Nuclear Proliferation: Methodological and Policy
Implications (Frank Cass, London, 1991), pages 175-90. The cited White House
papers are on file at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin. A number of
books are useful on the background of international control of nuclear en-
ergy. See The International Atomic Energy Agency and World Nuclear Order, by
Lawrence Scheinman (Resources for the Future, Washington, D.C., 1987) and
Nuclear Power Issues and Choices, chaired by Spurgeon M. Keeny, Jr. (Ballinger
Publishing Company, Cambridge, Mass., 1977). For a discussion of the Sam-

328 NOTES

son and Masada psychologies, see A Psycho-History of Zionism, by Jay Y. Gonen
(Mason J. Charter, New York, 1975), Chapter 13. The cited Podhoretz article is
entitled "The Abandonment of Israel" and appeared in the July 1976 issue of
Commentary. The New York Times article on Bergmann appeared on June 14,
1966, and is cited above.

11. Playing the Game

The most comprehensive book on James Angleton is Cold Warrior, by Tom
Mangold (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1991). Mangold shows that Angleton
always had the support of Richard Helms in his paranoid treatment of defec-
tors. Samuel Halpern was interviewed in his suburban Virginia home on
April 29, 1991. The CIA's estimate on the "Consequences of Israeli Acquisi-
tion of Nuclear Capability" can be found in the Mordechai Gazit book cited
above. For an excellent account of the making of the Chinese nuclear bomb,
see China Builds the Bomb, by John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai (Stanford
University Press, Stanford, Calif., 1988). The material cited from Glenn
Seaborg's Stemming the Tide (Lexington Books, Lexington, Mass., 1987) can be
found in Chapter 13, "A Tale of Two Committees." The quote about India
from McGeorge Bundy's Danger and Survival (Random House, New York,
1988) can be found on page 585. Seaborg describes the debate over the Gilpat-
ric panel. Robert Kennedy's cited Senate speech was delivered on June 23,
1965; see the Congressional Record for that day at page 14566. The John Finney
story was "Israel Permits U.S. to Inspect Atomic Reactor," New York Times,
March 14, 1965, page 1.

12. The Ambassador

Walworth Barbour is rarely mentioned in any of the contemporary books
about Israel or Middle East policies. One of the few to single out Barbour was
Abba Eban, in his Autobiography (Random House, New York, 1977); Eban cor-
rectly described him as "corpulent, good-natured and brilliantly incisive," at
page 297. Edward Dale was interviewed the first of many times at his home in
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on September 7, 1990. John Hadden was inter-
viewed in Brunswick, Maine, on June 8, 1989, and many times thereafter by
telephone. Peter Jessup was interviewed in Washington on March 20, 1989,
and later by telephone. Carmelo Alba was interviewed in suburban Virginia
on April 10, 1991. Herman Pollack was interviewed by telephone on May 21,
1991. Max Ben was initially interviewed by telephone from his home in St.
Petersburg, Florida, on May 22, 1991, and thereafter. The late Robert Webber's
widow, Clytie Webber, discussed her husband with the author on May 21,
1991. Eugene Braderman of Washington was interviewed twice by telephone
about his 1960s visit to Israel, on October 1, 1990, and again the following
April. The late Joseph Zurhellen was interviewed in New York on Septem-
ber 8, 1989. Arnold Kramish told of his meeting with Barbour in an interview
on June 5, 1990. The cited Golda Meir comment about Barbour can be found
in "Quiet Envoy to Israel," New York Times, April 3, 1971, one of the few times
Barbour's name appeared in print while he was ambassador.

13. An Israeli Decision

Yigal Allon's boastful remarks made page 1 in the New York Times for De-
cember 11, 1967, "Allon Hints Israel Has Missiles." Moshe Dayan's Soviet

NOTES 329

warning was published in Frankfurter Allgemeine on July 7, 1967. Walter Ros-
tow was interviewed at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas, on October 14, 1990.
Kissinger's nuclear remarks can be found on page 397 (footnotes) in the Aron-
son book cited above. The cited Time magazine article is "How Israel Got the
Bomb," April 12, 1976. The Plumbat Affair was written by Elaine Davenport,
Paul Eddy, and Peter Gillman (J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1978).

14. A Presidential Gift

Dan Rather' s question for the President came during a December 19, 1967,
news conference. The documents cited herein were released to the author
under the Freedom of Information Act; they are available from the LBJ Li-
brary. James Critchfield was interviewed April 13, 1989, and later by tele-
phone. Harry McPherson was interviewed by telephone on May 8, 1991. Carl
Duckett was interviewed at his home in Hutchins, Virginia, on June 27, 1991.
There have been many published accounts of Richard Helms's aborted at-
tempt to brief Johnson on the Israeli bomb; see "LBJ Was Told in '68 That
Israel Had Bomb," by John J. Fialka, Washington Star, March 1, 1978, page 1.
Paul Warnke was interviewed March 23, 1989, and later by telephone. Yitzhak
Rabin's account can be found at pages 141 and 142 of The Rabin Memoirs (Little,
Brown, Boston, 1979); Warnke somehow became Vornike in the Rabin book,
however. The late Harry Schwartz was interviewed July 14, 1989, at his home
near Easton, Maryland. The Rothschild pipeline deal was initially reported
July 18, 1959, in the New York Times, "Rothschild Investment Group To Oper-
ate Pipeline in Israel." Bill Moyers was interviewed by telephone on Febru-
ary 18, 1991.

15. The Tunnel

The best guide to the production of nuclear weapons is U.S. Nuclear War-
head Production, Vol. 2, by Thomas B. Cochran, William M. Arkin, Robert S.
Norris, and Milton M. Hoenig (Ballinger, Cambridge, Mass., 1987). The essen-
tial Vanunu story was "Revealed: The Secrets of Israel's Nuclear Arsenal,"
London Sunday Times, October 5, 1986. The story was written by the newspa-
per's "Insight" team, led by Peter Hounam. For an extensive analysis of
Vanunu, with additional information from his interviews with the Sunday
Times, see The Invisible Bomb, by Frank Barnaby (I. B. Tauris, London, 1989).
For details on Vanunu's life and his travails while being interviewed by the
Sunday Times in London, see Triple Cross, by Louis Toscano (Birch Lane Press,
New York, 1990). The use of robotics in the nuclear weapons production
process is briefly described in "Machining Hemispherical Shells," in the 1988
edition of Research Highlights, published by the Los Alamos National Labora-
tory. George Cowan was interviewed by telephone from New Mexico on
September 9, 1990; Hans Bethe was interviewed at his office at the California
Institute of Technology on January 21, 1991.

16. Prelude to War

Nixon's comments about the NPT were made September 8, 1968, in Pitts-
burg and September n, 1968, in Charlotte, North Carolina. NSDM 6, appar-
ently still classified, is in the author's possession. Morton Halperin was
interviewed in Washington on June 10, 1991. Charles Van Doren was inter-
viewed in Washington on May 29, 1989. NSDM 32 also is in the author's

330 NOTES

possession. Hedrick Smith's New York Times story was "U.S. Assumes the
Israelis Have A-Bomb or Its Parts," July 19, 1970, page 1. Smith was inter-
viewed about the story on May 9, 1991. Glenn Cella was interviewed March 31,
1989, and thereafter. David Long was interviewed by telephone on January 18,
1991; Curtis Jones was interviewed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on Sep-
tember 6, 1990. The Norris, Cochran, and Arkin essay is "History of the
Nuclear Stockpile," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, August 1985. There have
been many published accounts of Gerald Bull; a good one is "The Guns of
Saddam," by William Scott Malone, David Halevy, and Sam Hemingway,
Washington Post, Outlook Section, February 10, 1991. Israel's progress in laser-
separated uranium was first reported by Robert Gillette in Science Magazine,
March 22, 1974, "Uranium Enrichment: Rumors of Israeli Progress with La-
sers." Nicholas Veliotes was first interviewed on June 20, 1989, in Washington.
The Moshe Dayan quote about the end of the Third Temple can be found in
the previously cited Time magazine article of April 12, 1976; it is also cited in
Pry.

17. Nuclear Blackmail

There have been scores of analyses of the Yom Kippur War, besides the
memoirs of the participants. For differing points of view, see "Kissinger and
the Yom Kippur War," by Edward N. Luttwak and Walter Laqueur, Commen-
tary, September 1974; "Arab-Israeli Conflict: Implications of Mass Destruc-
tion Weapons," by Avigdor Haselkorn, Global Affairs, Winter 1988; "The
Relevance and Irrelevance of Nuclear Options in Conventional Wars: The
1973 October War," by Yair Evron, Jerusalem Journal of International Relations,
Vol. 7, Nos. 1-2, 1984; and "The Soviet Nuclear Threat Toward the Close of
the Yom Kippur War," by Yona Bandmann and Yishai Cordova, Jerusalem
Journal of International Relations, Vol. 5, No. 1, 1980. Also see the works cited
above by Shai Feldman and Shlomo Aronson. Mohammed Heikal was inter-
viewed by telephone from his office in Cairo on July 3, 1991. Henry Kissinger
describes his meeting with Ambassador Dinitz on page 493 in Chapter 11 of
Years of Upheaval (Little, Brown, Boston, 1982). Despite many calls to his office
and to his former colleagues in the U.S. government, Kissinger would not be
interviewed about the 1973 war. Hermann Eilts was interviewed on July 10,
1991, by telephone from Boston. James Schlesinger was interviewed on April
25, 1989, in Washington; William Colby was interviewed on January 10, 1991,
also in Washington. The Kalb brothers published the gist of their material on
the 1973 war from Kissinger (Little, Brown, Boston, 1974) in the New York Times
Magazine, June 23, 1974, "Twenty Days in October." Patrick Parker was inter-
viewed in Washington in early December 1990. Orwin Talbott was inter-
viewed by telephone from Annapolis, Maryland, his retirement home, on
December 10, 1990, and again on June 20, 1991. Bruce Williams was inter-
viewed in Washington on November 28, 1990. Kissinger's request for a CIA
report on the Israeli nuclear arsenal was first reported by Benjamin Welles in
the Christian Science Monitor for December 6, 1973, "Kissinger Orders CIA
Study of Israel's A- weapons Capability." Duckett's problems with the 1974
estimate have been widely reported; see "How Israel Got the Bomb," by John
Fialka, Washington Monthly, January 1979.

NOTES 331

1 8. Injustice

John Fialka, then with the Washington Star, and David Burnham, then with
the New York Times, have written extensively about the Zalman Shapiro case;
see Burnham's "The Case of the Missing Uranium," Atlantic, April 1979. Both
reporters, while raising repeated questions about Shapiro's actions, were
careful to note that he had not been formally accused of any wrongdoing. For
a different and more careless approach, see The Unnatural Alliance, by James
Adams (Quartet Books, London, 1984), beginning at page 152 (Adams assumes
that Shapiro was a Mossad asset). Dangerous Liaison doesn't do much better;
see Chapter 4, "A Sword for Damocles." The documents and reports cited
herein are available under the Freedom of Information Act; many thousands
of them on NUMEC and its problems have been released. Zalman Shapiro
was interviewed repeatedly by telephone from Pittsburgh, beginning on
April 12, 1991. George Murphy was interviewed by telephone on May 30, 1989,
and thereafter. James Lovett was interviewed on July 11, 1991. James Conran
was interviewed on July 16, 1991. Victor Gilinsky was interviewed on June 12,
1989, in suburban Maryland, and thereafter by telephone. Cynthia Virostek
was interviewed by telephone on July 17, 1991; she has assembled extensive
files on NUMEC, and the author wishes to thank her for her generous help.
Jody Powell's cited denial was published in the New York Times for October
26, 1977, "White House Discounts Allegations About Israeli Theft of Ura-
nium," by Charles Mohr. Duckett's television appearance was on "Near Ar-
mageddon: The Spread of Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East," an ABC
News Closeup, April 27, 1981. Henry Myers first discussed NUMEC and Sha-
piro with the author on November 17, 1980, and many times thereafter. Peter
Stockton's first conversation with the author about Shapiro took place on
January 26, 1988. Congressional funding for the cleanup of NUMEC was
reported by United Press International, October 28, 1990, "Congress OKs
Money for Cleanup of Nuclear Site." The estimate of more than one hundred
kilograms of recovered uranium ("inventory gain") was provided by a senior
technical official of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who reviewed Bab-
cock & Wilcox inventory reports to the NRC; such reports are available un-
der the Freedom of Information Act.

19. The Carter Malaise

Ari Ben-Menashe initially contacted the author in August 1990 and was
first interviewed in Cincinnati, Ohio, on April 11, 1991. He was subsequently
interviewed in Washington and many more times by telephone. For a defini-
tive account of the character of Menachem Begin, see The Life and Times of
Menachem Begin, by Amos Perlmutter (Doubleday, Garden City, NY, 1987).
Malcolm Toon was interviewed by telephone on May 20, 1991; his cable to
Washington about the senatorial visit was made available under the Freedom
of Information Act. The footnote about Vanunu and the senators' rebuff was
reported in Triple Cross. George Rathjens was interviewed by telephone on
March 25, 1989, and thereafter. Bergmann's speech in South Africa is cited in
The Unnatural Alliance, among other places. Vorster's visit to Israel created a
minor stir at the time: see "Vorster Visit to Israel Arouses Criticism," by
Terence Smith, New York Times, April 18, 1976. The best account of the Carter
administration's diplomacy on the 1977 Kalahari test was written by Murrey
Marder and Don Oberdorfer of the Washington Post; see their story as syndi-

332 NOTES

cated in the Philadelphia Inquirer for September 4, 1977, "How the Powers
Stopped a Test," page 1. The CIA's assessment of the attempted 1977 test was
provided under the Freedom of Information Act to the Natural Resources
Defense Council and made available to the press by the council on September
26, 1990. Harold Brown discussed the Israeli joint targeting request by tele-
phone on April 26, 1991; he was previously interviewed in Washington on
October 20, 1989.

20 An Israeli Test

There have been some excellent critiques of the White House's attempt,
through the Ruina panel, to wish away the Israeli-South African test. See
"The September 22, 1979, Mystery Flash: Did South Africa Detonate a Nu-
clear Bomb?" unpublished study by the Washington Office on Africa Educa-
tional Fund, May 21, 1985. The study was written by Ronald Walters of
Howard University. See also an unpublished study by Gary Milhollin (avail-
able through the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control): "The Vela
Sighting in 1979." Stephen Green, in Living by the Sword (Amana Books, Brat-
tleboro, Vt., 1988), dissects the Ruina report beginning at page in. Gerald
Oplinger was interviewed at his suburban Virginia home on January 9, 1991.
Spurgeon Keeny was interviewed on March 24, 1989, in Washington and
many times by telephone thereafter. Hodding Carter was interviewed by
telephone on August 2, 1991. See Gary Sick (cited above) for details on the
shah's visit to the United States. Jack Ruina was interviewed by telephone on
August 2, 1991. John Scali was interviewed by telephone on August 6, 1991.
Admiral Walters's bizarre explanation can be found in "Pretoria Suggests
Cause of 'Explosion,' " by John F. Burns, New York Times, October 28, 1979.
The cited P. W. Botha remark was on page 2 of the Rand Daily Mail for
September 26, 1979: "SA Could Have Secret Weapon, Hints PW." The July 15,
1979, Ruina report was released by the Office of Science and Technology
Policy in the White House and blandly entitled: "Ad Hoc Panel Report on
the September 22 Event." Harold Agnew was interviewed by telephone on
September 7, 1990. Louis Roddis was interviewed on May 7, 1991, and Donald
Kerr was interviewed in Washington on February 13, 1991. Joseph Nye was
briefly interviewed by telephone on January 2, 1991.

21. Israel's Nuclear Spy

The only book-length study of the Pollard affair is Territory of Lies, by Wolf
Blitzer (Harper & Row, New York, 1989), which professionally summarizes
all of the known and published information about the case. Blitzer, however,
accepts far too much of Pollard's account at face value. Many of the essential
details of Pollard's early life come from Blitzer and the press accounts at the
time. Samuel Lewis was interviewed about the White House meeting on
February 22, 1991. Sharon's strategic vision behind the Israeli invasion of Leb-
anon — and its folly — is most clearly spelled out in Israels Lebanon War, by
Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari (Simon & Schuster /Touchstone, New York,
1984). Sharon's December 15, 1981, speech is available in abridged form from
the Israeli embassy in Washington; it initially was issued as an embassy press
bulletin. For more on the Stern Gang, see Wanted, by Mordechai Schreiber
(Shengold Publishers, New York, 1984), beginning at page 142.

NOTES 333

22. An Israeli Asset

Peter Hounam was interviewed on July 30, 1991, by telephone from Lon-
don, and thereafter. The cited Sunday Mirror article prominently featured a
photograph of Vanunu next to an external photograph of the reactor at
Dimona; the story itself, although vividly displayed, was buried deep inside
the newspaper. Robert Watters was interviewed September 3, 1991, by tele-
phone from Suva, Fiji, where he was on assignment as an electronics techni-
cian for the South Pacific Commission. Nicholas Davies (no relation to Nick
Davies, a former reporter for the Independent) was interviewed by telephone
from his home in London on July 26, 1991. Janet Fielding was interviewed by
telephone from London on August 5, 1991. Peter Miller was interviewed by
telephone from London on August 21 and 22, 1991. John Parker was inter-
viewed in Washington on August 9, 1991. Tony Frost was interviewed by
telephone from Newcastle, England, on August 6 and thereafter. The foot-
noted material about the Miller and Frost complaints against Maxwell came
from the U.K. Press Gazette for April 29, 1991, "Sacked Mirror Man Finds Place
in Sun," by Jean Morgan. Michael Malloy was interviewed by telephone on
September 2, 1991, from the Passford House Hotel in Lymington, Hampshire,
England, where he was on vacation.

Index

Abrams, Creighton W., 237
Achdut Avodah (Unity of Labor)

Party, 38;*, 179;*
Acheson, Dean, 151;*
Adenauer, Konrad, 123
Afghanistan, 6

A-4E Skyhawk, 139, 153, 183-84
Africa:
CIA-Mossad operations in, 5, 6
as nuclear-free zone, 152
Palestinian sympathies in, 264
proposed Jewish homeland in, 87
see also North Africa
African National Congress, 266
Agnew, Harold M., 280
Agnew, Spiro T., 232
Air Force, U.S., 51;*, 53, 57, 88;*,

162, 205
Air Force Technical Applications

Center (AFTAC), 272
Al-Abram, 227, 231
Alba, Carmelo V., 163-64, 201;*
Algeria, 21, 36, 59, 68
Allen, Richard V., 8-9, 14-15, 287
Allon, Yigal, 38;*, 67, 138, 173-74,

179, 225, 261
Aman, 163
American Israel Public Affairs

Committee (AIPAC), 292
American Jewish Committee, 87
American Technion Society, 242
Anderson, Jack, 236
Angleton, James Jesus, 144-47, 163,

185;*, 238, 250
Angola, 13;*, 266
anti-Semitism, 60, 76, 91, 95, 264
Aqudas Achim synagogue, 127
Arab Federation, 121
Arab-Israeli conflicts:

Lebanon War, 259, 288, 294
Six-Day War, 13 lw, 156, 160, 166-
67, 174, 175, 177-78, 184-85,
222, 291
Suez War, 38, 39, 40-44, 175, 176,

178
War of Attrition, 212;*, 237
War of Independence, 19, 113, 141
Yom Kippur War, 179, 217, 222-
23, 225-40, 264
Arab League, 108, 265;*
Arab nations:
anti-U.S. oil embargo by, 232
international bias for, 133
Soviet military aid to, 7, 12, 35,
65, 103, 128, 135, 136, 138, 139,
153, 167, 170, 175-76, 183, 231,
237, 294
"three no's" of, 176
Arens, Moshe, 295
Argentina, 156
Arms Control and Disarmament

Agency (ACDA), 272
arms control talks, 74, 274, 275
see also Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty
Arms Export Control Act (1976),

260;*, 262
Army, U.S., 83, 162, 163
Aronson, Shlomo, 177
Arthur D. Little Company, 216;*
Atlantic Richfield Company

(ARCO), 248
Atomic Energy Act (1946), 125»
Atomic Energy Act (1954), 20, 243
Atomic Energy Commission (AEC),
U.S., 71, 87, 89, 92, 169
dissolution of, 251

336

INDEX

Atomic Energy Commission (AEC),
U.S. (cont.)

formation and responsibilities of,

83-84
Livermore Laboratory and, 91
NUMEC and, 242, 244, 245^8,

253, 254
uranium processing safeguards of,

244, 251
U-2 intelligence and, 54-55
Atomic Energy Commission

(France), 19, 28, 30, 31, 36, 37,
39, 60, 64
Atomic Energy Commission (Israel),
19, 20, 57, 79, 86, 88, 104, 109,
141-42, 173/*
Atoms for Peace, 20, 132/*, 242
Auschwitz-Birkenau, 88/*
Ayalon Museum, 196

Babcock & Wilcox, 252, 253/*, 256-

57
Bader, William B., 13-14
Baker, James A., Ill, 9
Baku, 216

Balfour Declaration, 35/*
Ball, George, 101
Bandung Conference (1955), 35
Bank Leumi, 171

Barbour, Walworth, 164, 165, 178,
184, 189
as Bank Leumi board member,

171
Dimona reconnaissance curtailed

by, 160, 168, 169, 170
Israeli sympathies of, 159, 161,

163, 167, 171
Johnson's assignment to, 160, 161
length of ambassadorship of, 159
physical appearance of, 159
Barnaby, Frank, 199/*
Barnet, Richard J., 75/*
Bar-on, Hanan, 304
Bartlett, Charles L., 96-97, 99, 117
Baruch, Bernard, 87
Bar-Zohar, Michael, 22, 45, 55, 78/*,

141/*
B'chia Ledoroty 140
Begin, Menachem, 4, 15, 38/*, 185,
275, 293, 298/*
anti-Communism of, 260
background of, 260

election of, 259, 269, 299
in EshkoFs government, 167
Israeli nuclear weapons program

and, 260
militarism of, 259
resignation of, 296
Sadat's summit with, 4, 269
strategic cooperation proposal to

U.S. by, 287-88
Beirut, 288
Belgium, 180, 181
Ben, Max, 165, 180
Ben-Gurion, David, 26, 45, 146, 167,

185, 195, 259, 298/*
Adenauer's secret negotiations

with, 123
Begin and, 275
as defense minister, 34-35
de Gaulle and, 68-69, 77
Dimona cover-up and, 78, 93,

108-11
ein brera fears of, 22, 37
end of public role of, 141
Israeli nuclear weapons program

and, 20, 22, 23, 27, 29, 31, 33-

34, 39, 44, 45, 59, 66, 67-70,

129-30, 135-36, 275-76
Kennedy and, 100-104, 106, 114,

117, 120-21, 124
Mapai Party controlled by, 33
political scandals and resignations

of, 117, 121-24
Rafi Party founded by, 139
second term of, 37, 39
Suez War and, 38, 41, 42, 43
temporary retirement of, 33-34
U.S. and, 21, 22, 27,41, 55
Ben-Menashe, Ari, 260, 264, 265,

275-76, 292, 295, 297-99
Vanunu case and, 309-15
Bentov, Cindy Hanin (pseudonym),

193, 315
Bergmann, Ernst David, 165, 180
background and early career of,

19, 23-25
Dimona cover-up and, 79, 103-4
forced government resignation of,

26, 86, 141
government positions held by, 19,

23, 26
Israeli nuclear weapons program

and, 19-32, 34, 36, 37, 39, 44-45,

INDEX

337

59, 61, 93, 104, 135-36, 154, 174,
264
as Rafi Party founding member,

140
Shapiro and, 243, 248-49
Strauss's secret friendship with,
85-86, 88, 142
Bergmann, Hani, 25
Berlin tunnel, 56
Bethe, Hans, 206
"black" squadrons, 301
Blake, George, 56n
Blumberg, Binyamin, 62, 131, 138,

205, 243, 250, 288
B'nai B'rith, 146
"boosted" fission weapons, 200
"Bor," 225

Border Patrol, U.S., 310
Botha, P. W., 278/j, 279
Braderman, Eugene M., 166
Bradlee, Benjamin C, Jr., 96n
Brandeis University, 101
Brezhnev, Leonid, 232, 267
Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, 23,

25
Brown, Harold, 270, 278
Brugioni, Dino A., 50, 63, 88w, 91,
157
background of, 47
U-2 Dimona reconnaissance and,
52-53, 55-58, 72, 73, 90, 100,
132/j, 143, 147
Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 272, 273, 278
Buchwald, Art, 72n
Bulganin, Nikolai, 41
Bull, Gerald, 216
Bundy, McGeorge, 99, 105, 125-26,

133, 134, 149, 150, 152, \S5n
Bush, George, 9, 239-40

Camp David summit (1978), 4, 6,

269, 275
Canada, 37, 39, 164, 168
cannons, long-range, 216-17
Cape National Party (South Africa),

279
Carter, Hodding, III, 274
Carter, Jimmy, 88w, 27 Sn
codework clearances frozen by,

Un-Hn
election of, 3
Iran toasted by, 6, 274

Israeli-U.S. intelligence liaison

agreement and, 3-4, 13w
nuclear fuel reprocessing ban

upheld by, 27 3 n
South African nuclear weapons

program protested by, 267-68
Carter administration, 23

Israeli nuclear weapons policy of,

260-63, 266-70
Israeli view of, 5
Israel-U.S. intelligence liaison

agreement and, 3-7
nuclear nonproliferation stance

of, 261-63, 268
South African-Israeli nuclear test

cover-up by, 271-83
Casey, William J., 12-13, 16
Cella, Glenn R., 213-14
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),

120
covert financing by, 5, 145
Dimona reconnaissance by, 50,

51, 52-58, 63, 72, 73, 76, 90, 99w,

100, 106-7, 112, 132/j, 143, 147-

48, 156-57, 162-63, 186-89, 198-

99, 212, 213, 231, 235
disconnects in intelligence

processing by, 157, 237, 291
domestic operations by, 250
government coups and, 42w
inaccurate predictions by, 6, 13w
intelligence leaks from, 7w-8w, 16,

\lln
Israeli bombing raid reviewed by,

13, 16
Jews in, 89, 145-46
Mossad's joint ventures with, 5-6,

13h
National Photo Interpretation

Center of, 107, 156, 283
nuclear intelligence shifted from,

155
NUMEC uranium alleged

diversion and, 187, 241, 243,

247, 252, 254
Office of National Estimates

(ONE) of, 147-48
Office of Science and Technology

of, 156-57, 187, 235
Photographic Intelligence

Division of, 47, 50, 51, 54
proprietary companies of, 146

338

INDEX

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
(cont.)
Six-Day War and Israeli

operations of, 168/*
South African-Israeli nuclear test

and, 272, 273
Special National Intelligence

Estimate (SNIE) by, 282
trash analyzed by, 146
chain reactions, 28, 201
at Dimona, 119, 164
CHAOS, Operation, 144/*, 145, 146,

250
chemical and biological weapons
(CBW), 63-64, 136, 216, 260/*
chemical reprocessing plants:
at Dimona, 37, 43, 56-57, 61, 69,
106, 111, 118, 120, 130, 131, 163,
180/*, 188, 196-97, 198, 200, 201,
202, 247, 254, 282
at Marcoule, 29, 56-57
nuclear weapons manufacturing
role of, 29, 37, 56, 120
CHESS U-2 photographs, 48
China, People's Republic of, 153,
155, 216/*
Egypt and, 35, 138
IAEA and, 133
McCone's proposed air strike

against, 150-51
nuclear weapons program of,
148^9, 246, 271
Chou En-lai, 35

Clifford, Clark, 95, 168/*, 189, 190-91
Cockburn, Andrew, 256
Cockburn, Leslie, 256
codework clearances, 13/*-14/*
Colby, William, 230, 233/*
Cold War, 21, 27, 128, 215
CIA-Mossad joint ventures as

secret in, 5
Middle East and, 139, 145, 175-76
Commentary, 137/*
Commerce Department, U.S., 242,

250
Committee for the Denuclearization

of the Middle East, 109
Committee of Thirty, 66
computer industry, computers, 137,

214
Congregation Emanu-El, 86

Congress, U.S., 125/*, 169, 212, 233,

256, 262, 263
Conran, James H., 251
"Consequences of Israeli

Acquisition of Nuclear

Capability," 148
CORONA reconnaissance satellite,

156
Cosmos reconnaissance satellite, 267
Counsel to the President (Clifford), 191
Couve de Murville, Maurice, 68, 69,

75
Cowan, George A., 206
Crawford, William R., 100-101, 106
Critchfield, James, 185/*
Cuba, 275

Cuban missile crisis, 50/*, 126/*
Culler, Floyd L., Jr., Dimona

inspections by, 112-13, 131, 133,

140/*, 151, 154, 196, 210, 215
Cytex Corporation, 312

Dachau, 127

Daily Express (London), 76

Dale, William N., 161, 164, 165-66,

168, 169, 170, 189
Daily Mirror (London), 309, 311, 313
Danger and Survival (Bundy), 150/*
Dangerous Liaison (Cockburn and

Cockburn), 256
Daniel Sieff Institute, 25/*
Dassault Company, 120, 143, 173,

175
Davies, Nicholas, 309-10, 315
Dayan, Moshe, 34, 39, 117, 220, 221,
262/*
antiquities appropriated by, 218
on Arab military strength, 220,

222
as army chief of staff, 3 3
Israeli nuclear weapons program
and, 67/*, 129, 141, 174-75, 176-
77, 178, 179-80, 189
La von Affair and, 122-23
in Ran Party, 139
secret South African trip of, 264-

65
as security risk, 218
Six-Day War and, 167, 174, 185
Suez War and, 38
Yom Kippur War and, 222, 223,
225, 226, 227

INDEX

339

Defense Department, U.S., 125,
143, 183, 186, 211, 214, 256-57
Advanced Research Project

Agency (ARPA) of, 276
Institute for Defense Analysis

(IDA) of, 276
National Military Command

Center of, 272
Office of Net Assessments of,
269-70, 278
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA),

6, 13, 143^4, 198, 272-73
de Gaulle, Charles, 29, 75n, 77,
\26n y 175
Dimona opposed by, 59-60, 61,
68, 69-70, 120, 263
demarches, 75

Democratic Party, 27, 93, 95, 96, 192
desalinated water, 20, 63, 64, 85,

154, 2Un-\2n, 249
Desert Storm, Operation, 20 In
Deshalit, Amos, 25-26, 79, 102, 144,

147, 180
Deshalit, Meir (Meme), 144, 147
Detachment 515, 219

see also Unit 8200
deuterium, 49, 200
Deux Bombes, Les (Pean), (An, 263
diGenova, Joseph E., 305
Dimona nuclear weapons facility,
25fl, 31,91, 195-207
chemical reprocessing plant at,
37,43, 56-57,61,69, 106, 111,

118, 120, 130, 131, 163, 180h,
188, 196-97, 198, 200, 201, 202,
247, 254, 282

CIA reconnaissance of, 50, 51, 52-
58, 63, 72, 73, 76, 90, 99a, 100,
106-7, 112, 132h, 143, 147-48,
156-57, 162-63, 186-89, 198-99,
212, 213, 231, 235

cooling capacity of, 199, 282

cost and financing of, 65-67, 93,
124, 136, 192**

cover-up stories on, 63, 72, 78,

119, 130

economic effects of, 59, 67-68, 137
ethnic and national tensions in

construction of, 60-61
false control room of, 111
first bomb assembled at, 179-80
formal authorization for, 43 n

France's role at, 11, 16, 43h, 56,

59-65, 68-70, 72, 75, 76, 106,

119rt, 130, 145, 211, 307
fuel for, 156

governmental ignorance of, 206-7
heavy water used for, 77, 103,

104, 111
institutes (Machons) of, 201-2, 219
international inspections sought

for, 69, 80, 100-101, 106, 108,

117, 124, 128, 129, 132, 135, 136,

153, 154-55, 186, 212
location of, 11, 33, 45
Norway's inspection of, 77, 103
objections to, 59, 65, 67, 78, 79,

93, 109, 137-38
planes shot down over, 131h
production capability of, 45, 119-

20, 156, 202, 203-4, 282
secrecy of, 11, 37, 46, 57, 61, 62-

63, 64-65, 66, 79, 91, 93, 103-4,

108-15, 131-32, 148
security precautions at, 62, 130—

31, 197
staff of, 68, 197
sustained chain reaction achieved

at, 119, 164
temporary closure of, 1 1
U.S. embassy intelligence on, 57,

160, 162, 163-64, 165-66, 168-

69, 184, 247
U.S. given inside photos of, 290-

91
U.S. inspections of, 94, 98, 102,

104, 109-15, 131, 133, 140h, 143,

151, 153, 154, 169, 196, 210-11,

215, 262
Vanunu's revelations about, 196,

205
Dinitz, Simcha, 228-29, 236
downlinks, 14, 15, 16
"dual loyalty," 89-92, 241
Duckett, Carl E., 189, 214, 237
Israeli nuclear intelligence

reports by, 156-57, 186-87, 212,

231, 235, 240, 282
NUMEC uranium alleged

diversion and, 188, 241, 247,

250, 251-56
public revelations by, 239-40, 261
suppression of intelligence

reports by, 212, 213

340

INDEX

Duckett, Carl E. (cont.)

Teller and, 186-87, 250, 254
Dulles, Allen, 50, 51, 54, 58, 76, 105,

151/*
Dulles, John Foster, 50, 54, 74, 75

Eastern Europe:
Israeli diplomatic relations

severed by, 175
emigration to Israel from, 145,
163
Eban, Abba, 38/*, 191
Edelman, Peter B., 98/*
Eden, Anthony, 41
Egypt, 3, 34, 110, 121, 154, 194, 296
in Arab Federation, 121
guerrilla warfare between Israel

and, 35, 36
Kennedy and, 102-3, 107-8
military spending by, 65
Nasser's coup in, 21, 104
nuclear weapons and, 67, 69, 101,

129-30, 133, 138, 152, 153/*
secret negotiations between Israel

and, 33, 34, 35
Six-Day War and, 166, 167, 175
Soviet military aid to, 35, 65, 103,
139, 167, 170, 175, 183, 231, 237
Soviets ousted from, 221
Suez War and, 38, 39, 40
in United Arab Republic, 51, 53,

133, 135
War of Attrition and, 212/*, 237
West Germany military aid to,

123
Yom Kippur War and, 222, 225,
227, 229, 231-32, 233, 235n
Eichmann, Adolf, 289
82nd Airborne Division, U.S., 233
Eilts, Hermann F., 229, 230
ein brera, 22-23, 37
Einstein, Albert, 25/*, \02n
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 23, 73, 84,
118
Atomic Energy Act amended by,

\25n
Dimona denial accepted by, 80
Israeli arms embargo maintained

by, 22
Kennedy advised by, 106
Peres on, 41-42
Powers incident and, 74

Strait of Tiran commitment of,

178
Strauss supported by, 84, 85, 87,

89
Suez War and, 38, 41-43
U-2 Dimona reconnaissance and,

54, 58, 76
U-2 program initiated and ended

by, 47, 76
U-2 Soviet reconnaissance and,
47, 48, 50, 51
Eisenhower administration:
Dimona leak and, 73, 79-80
Israeli nuclear weapons
development and, 20, 53-58, 64,
93
Suez War and, 40-44
Tripartite Agreement and, 22
Eisenhower Library, 53n, 55n
Eitan, Rafael (Ran), 288-89, 292,

294-95, 296, 297, 300, 301
Elazar, David, 225, 226, 236-37
Elder, Walter N., 73, 105-6, 107,

126/*, 150, 151
elections, U.S.:
of 1948, 93, 94-95
of 1952, 95
of 1956, 95
of 1960, 95-98
of 1964, 149, 193
of 1968, 189, 191
of 1976, 3
of 1980, 274, 275
11-38 intelligence review, 286
el-Gamasy, Mohammed Abdel

Ghany, 227
Ellsberg, Daniel, 125, 126, 150-51
El 2 nuclear reactor, 39
El 102 nuclear reactor, see Dimona

nuclear weapons facility
Energy Department, U.S., 84, 281
Eniwetok nuclear test site, 49
Eshkol, Levi, 38/*, 125, 173/*, 192/*,
200
Johnson and, 86, 130, 132, 134-35,

136, 139, 154, 166, 183, 186
La von Affair and, 122
nuclear weapons objections of, 37,

65, 79, 86, 124, 136
nuclear weapons policy of, 129,

130, 133-42, 162, 180/*
on occupied territories, 185

INDEX

341

political reforms of, 124
as prime minister, 37, 124
Six-Day War and, 166-67

Euratom, 180-81

Evron, Ephraim, 186

Farley, Philip J., 75
Fatah, El, 249

Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI), 85, 243, 247, 248, 250,
252, 253
Feinberg, Abraham, 160, 185
background of, 93
Bergmann and, 27, 93
Coca-Cola franchise of, 192
Dimona cover-up and, 108-9, 111
Dimona fund-raising by, 66, 93,

95
Hagannah fund-raising by, 195-96
Johnson and, 98/*, 126, 190-91,

192, 193, 194
Kennedy and, 93, 94, 95-98, 100,

101-2, 103, 111
Truman and, 93, 94-95, 126
Feinberg, Wilfred, 98
Feldman, Myer (Mike), 98-100, 108,

141/*, 192-93
F-4 Phantom, 183-84, 186, 189, 190,
191, 192, 194, 211, 213, 216, 222,
225
F-15 Eagle, 294

F-16 Fighting Falcon, 8-9, 294, 301
Fielding, Janet, 311
Finney, John W.:
on Dimona inspections, 140/*, 154
Dimona story leaked to, 71-73,
74, 77/*
fission vs. fusion, in nuclear

weapons, 48^49
Flapan, Simha, 138
force defrappe, 44, 60, 75/*, 126/*, 152,

176
Ford, Gerald R., 3, 5, 239, 273/*
Ford administration, 252, 261, 269
Fortas, Abe, 126
Fox, Raymond, 91
France, 24, 133
arms sales to Israel by, 36, 65, 69,

175
Communist Party in, 21,^27
decolonization by, 21, 36
Dimona role of, 11, 16, 43/*, 56,

59-65, 68-70, 72, 75, 76, 106,

119/*, 130, 145, 211, 307
elections in, 43/*
heavy water sales of, 111
Israeli arms embargo by U.S.

and, 183
joint anti-Soviet nuclear targeting

proposed to U.S. by, 270/*
military deals between Iraq and,

16, 64/*
NATO and, 27, 36, 44, 126/*
nuclear deterrent of, 44, 60, 75/*,

126/*, 152, 176
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty

and, 209
in Nuclear Suppliers Group, 267
nuclear weapons program of, 28-

31,63,66, 125, 145, 271
nuclear weapons program of

Israel and, 11, 16, 23, 27^6, 59-

65,68-70, 118-19, 155, 263
Suez War and, 38, 40^3
in Tripartite Agreement, 21-22
Frankfurter Allgemeine, 175
Freedom of Information Act (1974),

80, 253/*
Freier, Shalheveth, 218-19, 226
French Air Force, 64
Frost, Tony, 313-14
fusion vs. fission, in nuclear

weapons, 48^49

Gahal Party, 38/*

Galili, Yisrael, 38/*, 225

Gallois, Pierre, 44

GAMBIT reconnaissance satellite,

156
Garment, Leonard, 303-5
Garment, Suzanne, 304
Gates, Robert M., 260/*
Gaza Strip, 35, 113, 115, 118, 167,

218/*
General Accounting Office (GAO),

253, 256
General Zionist Party, 38/*
Germany, Federal Republic of

(West), 48, 123, 133, 152, 209-10,

267
Germany, Nazi, 24, 88/*, 123, 127,

265
Germany, occupied, 47

342

INDEX

Gilinsky, Victor, 251-52, 262n, 287-

19n
Gilpatric, Roswell L., 151-52, 153
Gilpatric report, 151-52, 153
Golan, Matti, 45
Golan Heights, 167, 184, 231, 238h,

312
Goldschmidt, Bertrand, 30-32, 39-

40,68, 119
Gomolak, Louis S., I27n
Goodpaster, Andrew J., 55n
Government Communications
Headquarters (GCHC& In
Graham, Thomas W., 65-66
Great Britain, 164, 168
Balfour Declaration and, 35n
decolonization by, 21
intelligence leak in, In
Israeli guerrilla war against, 195-

96, 259, 298h
in Nuclear Suppliers Group, 267
nuclear weapons program of, 28,

12 5n-26n
Suez War and, 38, 40-42
in Tripartite Agreement, 21-22
U.S. intelligence relationship
with, 3, 7
Guatemala, 42 n
Guerrero, Oscar E., 309, 311
Guillaumat, Pierre, 28, 29, 31-32, 39
Gur, Mordecai, 228, 295n

ha 'anoseh ha 'adin, 140

Hadden, John L., 161-62, 164, 247,

253, 254, 256
Hagannah, 24, 141, 195-96
Haifa, 130, 177, 203, 223
Haig, Alexander M., Jr., %n-9n, 14,

287
Halevy, David, 180h
Halperin, Morton H., 210
Halpern, Samuel, 146
Harman, Avraham, 74, 75-76, 77
Hawk missiles, 103, 109-10, 118, 119
heavy water, 19, 30, 31, 39, 64, 77,

103, 104, 111, 200,201
Heikal, Mohammed, 227, 229, 230-

31, 235n
Helms, Richard M., 186, 188-89,

212, 214, 241, 247, 250, 255
Herter, Christian A., 74-75, 80
Herut Party, 38w, 299

Herzog, Chaim, 264

Hickenlooper, Bourke B., 80-81

Hirbat Zachariah, 173, 216, 225, 231

Hiroshima, 46, 48

Histadrut, 122

Hitler, Adolf, 22, 139, 221

Hod, Mordecai, 190

Hon, Yitzhak, 9, 11, 295

Holocaust, 195

Jewish consciousness of, 10, 22-
23, 27, 30, 37, 42, 136, 138, 226

reparations paid to Israel for,
I23n

Strauss's feelings about, 83, 86-87,

89, 91

Hoover, J. Edgar, 250

Hounam, Peter, 308, 309

House Subcommittee on Oversight

and Investigations, 253
HUMINT, 147
Humphrey, Hubert H., 209
Hussein, King of Jordan, 185h, 289
hydrogen bombs, 49-50, 84, 200
Hyland, William G., 229

I.G. Farben, $$n

India, 37, 39, 65, 61 n, 149, I50n,

153n, 261 n
Institute for Advanced Studies, 86,

142
Institute of Nuclear Science, 25n
Intelligence Advisory Committee,

U.S., 73
intelligence and warning (I&W), 6
intelligence community:
Israel-France relationship in, 36,

145
Israeli scandals in, 34, 61-62
Israel-U.S. relationship in, 3-17,

90, 162, 292

leaks in, ln-$n, 16, llln

passing unwanted information in,
5ln-52n, 143-44, 238, 239-40
International Assembly on Nuclear

Weapons (1966), 15 5n
International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA), 11, 266

Dimona inspections and, 69, 80,
100-101, 106, 108, 110, 117, 124,
128, 129, 131, 132, 133-34, 135,
136, 153, 154-55, 186, 212

INDEX

343

uranium ore shipments

monitored by, 156
International Institute for Strategic

Studies (IISS), 155/*
Iran, 6, 42/*, 220/*, 260/*, 274/*

Israeli arms sales to, 298, 309-10
Iran-Iraq War, 309
Iraq, 175
in Arab Federation, 121
Israeli bombing raid in, 8-10, 11,

12, 13, 16, (An, 259, 286
military deals between France

and, 16, (An
nuclear capability of, 9-10
Persian Gulf War and, 201/*
Qassem's coup in, 51
Soviet military aid to, 7, 12
"supergun" of, 2l6n
U.S. arms sales to, 260n
Irgun, 259, 298/*
Israel:
business deals awarded in, 192
Carter administration as viewed

by, 5
censorship in, 11, 180/*, 223
CIA leaks to, 16
creation of, 89, 146
denial of nuclear weapons

intentions by, 69
diplomatic recognition of, 21/*, 94
"dual loyalty" and, 89-92
elections in, 37, 38/*, 104, 123/*,

139-40, 141, 259, 269, 296
espionage activities in U.S. by,

90, 162, 292
first nuclear missile field of, 173
French arms sales to, 36, 65, 69,

175
F-16 deal between U.S. and, 8-9
Greater (Eretz), 38/*, 185
guerrilla warfare between Egypt

and, 35, 36
heavy water purchased from

Norway by, 77
intelligence service of, see Mossad
Iranian arms purchases from, 298,

309-10
Iraqi nuclear reactor bombed by,

8-10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 64/*, 259,

286
isolation felt by, 175, 264
joint anti-Soviet nuclear targeting

proposed to U.S. by, 269-70,

278
Kennedy's defense commitment

to, 117-18
KGB penetration of, 219-20
KH-11 reconnaissance

photographs given to, 3-17
labor union strength in, 66, 122,

197
military budget of, 136, 174, 179,

221
military intelligence service of,

163
national security doctrine of, 301
nonespionage agreement between

U.S. and, 90
nuclear blackmail by, 223, 225^40
nuclear weapons program of

France and, 11, 16, 23, 27^6,

59-65, 68-70, 118-19, 155, 263
nuclear weapons program of

South Africa and, 155, 263-68,

270, 271-83
nuclear weapons spending by, 67
nuclear weapons strategy of, 16-

17, 66, 91-92, 217
occupied territories and, 167, 184-

86, 259, 264
parliament of, see Knesset
party politics of, 38/*, 139-40,

179/*, 259, 296
public debate on nuclear weapons

policy in, 129-30, 131, 138, 142
rocket program of, 104, 120
secret nuclear weapons

conferences in, 136, 138-39
South African uranium ore

purchases by, 156, 264, 266
Soviet and East European

emigration to, 145, 163
Soviet nuclear targeting of, 177
Soviet Union as nuclear target of,

16-17, 66, 139, 174-75, 176-77,

214, 216, 220-21, 260, 261, 270,

285, 287, 301
Soviet Union's relationship with,

21/*, 61, 175
Suez War and, 38, 39, 40-44
tourism in, 178
U.S. arms sales to, 8-9, 103, 108-

10, 118, 119, 133, 135, 139, 153,

344

INDEX

Israel (cont.)

183-84, 186, 189-92, 211,213,
216, 221
U.S. commitments to, 176, 177,

178, 183
U.S. -French arms embargo

against, 183
U.S. Jewish aid to, 20, 21, 58, 66,

90, 93, 178
U.S. Jewish emigration to, 58, 91
U.S. lobby of, 27, 74, 96-97, 178
U.S. nuclear umbrella sought by,

21-23, 38,44, 55, 113
West German arms deals with,
123, 133
Israel and Nuclear Weapons (Jabber),

155*
Israel Bond Organization, 93
Israel Chemicals Company, 300
Israeli Air Force, 10, 12, 131, 167,

188, 216, 217, 288, 294
Israeli Army, 40-41, 7Sn
Israeli Defense Force, 61, 131, 156,
201, 216, 232, 271, 276*, 289
External Relations Department
of, 260n, 276, 292, 295
Israeli Navy, 293
Italy, 21, 159*, 298*

Jabber, Fuad, 155tf

Jabotinsky, Vladimir, 185

Japan, 47, 137, 210, 218

Jenkins, Walter W., 192-94

Jericho I missiles, 120, 125, 143, 173,

175, 212, 216, 301
Jerusalem, 167, 184-85, 259
Jessup, Peter C, 163, 238
Jews:

in Afghanistan and Iran, 6

African homeland proposed for,
87

in France's science community,
30

Johnson's aid to, 127-28

Kennedy and, 96-98, 103

in North Africa, 36, 60-61

in South Africa, 264
Jews, U.S., 42*

Angleton's index on, 145-46

Ben-Gurion's loss of faith in, 41

in CIA, 89, 145-^6

"dual loyalty" and, 89-92, 241

emigration to Israel by, 58, 91
financial aid to Israel from, 20,

21, 58, 66, 90, 93
Johnson and, 127-28, 151, 191
as lobbyists, 27, 74, 96-97
as refugees, 127-28
Vietnam War opposed by, 191
John F. Kennedy, USS, 233
John F. Kennedy Library, 99, 148
Johnson, Lady Bird, 127, 128
Johnson, Lyndon B., 178, 183-94,
247
Barbour's assignment from, 160,

161
Bundy's misleading of, 133
cash contributions and, 194
Dimona intelligence reports
supposed by, 188-89, 212
election of, 149

Eshkol pressured by, 86, 130, 132,
134-35, 136, 139, 154, 166, 183,
186
Feinberg and, 9Sn, 126, 190-91,

192, 193, 194
Jewish refugees aided by, 127-28
Kennedy's exclusion of, 126
nuclear nonproliferation policy
of, 128, 149, 151-53, 191, 209
Vietnam War and, 99, 128, 151,
153, 191
Johnson administration:

Israeli nuclear weapons policy of,

143-57, 183-94
public vs. private nuclear
proliferation stance of, 148-53
Joint Atomic Energy Commission,

214h, 242-^3, 246
Joint Chiefs of Staff, 84
Joint Committee on Atomic

Energy, 76, 81
Joliot-Curie, Frederic, 27-28
Jones, Curtis F., 215
Jordan, 3, 167, 175, 184, 201*, 289,

296
Justice Department, U.S., 285, 303,
310

Kafkafi, Jeruham, 255
Kalb, Bernard, 234
Kalb, Marvin, 234
Kampiles, William T., 7n-$n
Katzenbach, Nicholas D., 185tf

INDEX

345

Katzir, Aharon (Aharon

Katchalsky), 26, 205, 218
Kaysen, Carl, 86, 98, 99
Keating, Kenneth B., 222
Keeny, Spurgeon M., Jr., 272-73,

277, 281-82
Kelly Field, 5ln

Kennedy, John F., 50n, 150, 159, 275
assassination of, 126
Ben-Gurion and, 100-104, 106,

114, 117, 120-21, 124
Dimona inspection sought by, 76,

81, 98, 100-15, 130, 131
Egypt rapprochement sought by,

102-3, 107-8
Feinberg and, 93, 94, 95-98, 100,

101-2, 103, 111
Eisenhower's foreign affairs

advice to, 106
Meir and, 117-18, 135
Middle East policy of, 113-14, 135
nuclear nonproliferation policy
of, 117, 118, 125, 163
Kennedy, Joseph P., 95, 96, 103
Kennedy, Robert F., 98h, 99-100,

152-53
Kennedy administration:
disharmony in, 99
Israeli nuclear weapons policy of,

93-115
non-espionage agreement between

Israel and, 90
nuclear test ban and, 85, 105
Kerr, Donald M., Jr., 280-81
KGB, 219-20, 299
Khartoum Arab summit (1967), 176
Khrushchev, Nikita, 74, 102
KH-11 reconnaissance satellite, 231,
283, 290, 292
description of, 4h
Hirbat Zachariah reconnaissance

by, 231
intelligence leaks about, 7n-Sn
Israeli access to photographs by,

3-17
Israeli downlink sought for, 15,

16
Pollard spy case and, 296, 297
Soviet reconnaissance by, 13, 15,
16, 17
Kibbutzim, 140
Kibiya massacre, 7Sn

King David Hotel, bombing of, 259

Kissinger, Henry A.:

Israeli nuclear weapons policy of,

168-69, 209-12, 235
Middle East policy of, 177
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty

undermined by, 209-10
on Sadat, 221

shuttle diplomacy of, 230, 236
Yom Kippur War and, 227-37

Kissinger (Kalb and Kalb), 234

KK Mountain, 5, 145

Knesset, 22, 37, 78-79, 122, 139, 141,
154, \55n, 179w, 288, 299

Kollek, Teddy, 141h, 184

Komer, Robert W., 99, 134, 135

Kosygin, Alexei N., 232

Kramish, Arnold, 169

Kratzer, Myron B., 77, 89

Kremlin, U-2 photos of, 48

Krock, Arthur, 71

krytrons, 213

Labor Party (Israel), 38h, 179, 259,

296, 301
Labour Party (Great Britain), 41
LAKAM, see Office of Special Tasks
laser uranium enrichment, 201, 219
Latin America, as nuclear-free zone,

152
Lavon, Pinhas, 33, 34, 79, 109, 122
Lavon Affair, 34, 121-22, 124, 139,

140
Lebanon, 3, 51
Lebanon War, 259, 288, 294
Leinsdorf, Erich, 127
Leor, Yisrael "Gingy," 225, 226-27
Lewis, Samuel W., 286, 287-88, 295
Liberty, USS, 167-68
Likud Party, 38h, 259, 264, 296
Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963),

124-26
lithium, 52, 202
lithium deuteride, 49, 200
lithium 6, 200, 201
Lawrence Livermore Laboratory,

24tf, 91, 145, 155, 156, 198, 206,

266, 291
Lockheed Aircraft Company, 47
Long, David E., 214-15
Los Alamos, 145, 199, 206

346

INDEX

Los Alamos (cont)
intelligence operations at, 155,

156, 266
VELA nuclear detection satellite

and, 273, 280
see also Manhattan Project
Lovett, James E., 248
Low Altitude Bombing System

(LABS), 194
Lowenthal, David, 247, 254-55
loyalty oaths, 84
Lucet, Charles, 118-19
Lundahl, Arthur C, 47, 50, 63, 74,
156-57
as NPIC head, 107
U-2 Dimona reconnaissance and,
53-56, 58, 72, 73, 100, 143, 147
Lyndon B. Johnson Library, 132,
135, 167, 16Sn, 178, 192

Maariv, 129, 142, 312
McCone, John A., 126n, 134
as AEC chairman, 71, 73
AEC resignation of, 72, 77
as CIA director, 73, 76, 93, 105,

150-51, 163
death of, 73
Dimona story leaked to Finney

by, 71-73, 74, 11 n
Israeli nuclear weapons program

opposed by, 93, 118-19
Johnson and, 151
Kennedy and, 105-6, 150
Strauss and, 73, 83, 89, 91, 92
Machon 2, see Dimona nuclear
weapons facility, chemical
reprocessing plant at
Macmillan, Harold, \26n
McNamara, Robert S., 108-9, 126a,

149, 150, 188-89
McPherson, Harry C, 186
Malloy, Michael, 313-14
Manhattan Project, 23, 25, 27, 28,
30, 46, 49, 58, 63, 83-84, 102;*
Mansfield, Mike J., \25n
"Man's First Robot with Muscles,"

205
Mapai (Israel Workers') Party, 27,
33, 34h, 37, 38h, 39, 65, 67, 104,
117, 121, 122, 123, 129, 139, 140,
141-42, I19n, 259

Mapam (United Workers') Party,

3Sn, 179a; 299
Marcoule nuclear reactor, 29, 30, 37,

43, 46, 56-57, 263
Marine Corps, U.S., 51
Mark, Hans M., 23
Mark, Herman F., 23-24, 25, 26, 27,

44
Marshall, Andrew W., 269-70
Masada complex, 137 n
"material unaccounted for" (MUF),

244, 246
Maxwell, Robert, 312, 315
Mediterranean Allied Air Force,

88a
Meese, Edwin, III, 303
Meet the Press, 72, 74, 77
Meir, Golda, 121, 140, 162, 171, 202,
221
Kennedy and, 117-18, 135
Kissinger and, 230n, 236
La von Affair and, 122-23
as prime minister, 39
Suez War and, 42, 43
Yom Kippur War and, 225, 226,
228, 233
Mendes-France, Pierre, 35
Meyer, Armin, 74-75, 110, 113, 114
Middle East Task Force, 213
Midrasha conferences (1964-65),

136, 138-39
MiG-21, 65, 103, 175, 183
Mirage III, Uln, 175
"missile gap," 50
missiles:
Jericho I, 120, 125, 143, 173, 175,

212, 216, 301
Project 700 program of, 174, 216
satellite reconnaissance of, 231
Scud, 12, 234

surface-to-air, 286, 294, 298
TOW, 310
Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Shah of

Iran, 6, 173, 274
Mollet, Guy, 36, 40-41, 42, 43
Morocco, 21
Moscow, reconnaissance

photographs of, 13, 48
Mossad, 76, 77, 163, \6Sn, 111, 181,
220, 236, 289, 298, 299
CIA's joint ventures with, 5-6,
Un

INDEX

347

Vanunu kidnapped by, 198, 308,
315
Moyers, Bill, 193-94
Mozambique, 13/*, 266
multilateral force (MLF), 152
Murphy, George F., Jr., 248
Myers, Henry R., 254-55
Mystere aircraft, 42/*

Nagasaki, 46, 48, 138

Nahal Soreq nuclear reactor, 20, 67,

101, 103, 132/*
Namibia, 266

Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 36, 53, 101,
129-30, 135, 221, 227
Communist help sought by, 35
Israeli views of, 21, 22, 40, 42
Kennedy and, 102-3, 107-8
Pan-Arabism of, 21, 40, 55
"preventive war" threatened by,

138
rise to power of, 21, 104
Sharett's secret negotiations with,

33, 34, 35
Six-Day War and, 166, 178
Suez Canal nationalized by, 38
National Liberation Front (FLN),

21, 36
National Photo Interpretation

Center (NPIC), 107, 156, 283
National Reconnaissance Office

(NRO), 23*
National Security Agency (NSA), 4,
14, 51, 89, 188, 219, 220, 237,
278, 293
National Security Council (NSC),
75, 98, 99, 105, 134, 168/*, 192,
239
National Security Decision

Memorandum (NSDM) No. 6,
210
National Security Decision

Memorandum (NSDM) No. 32,
212/*
National Water Carrier, 249-50
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty
Organization), 7, 27, 36, 44,
126/*, 152
Naval Security Group, 89
Navy, U.S., 162, 233, 242, 256
Navy Intelligence, U.S., 285, 292-93
Nazis, 60, 88/*

Neeman, Yuval, 121, 233

Netherlands, 265/*

neutron bombs, 199-200

Newsweek, 309

New York Herald Tribune, 72/*

New York Times, 71, 72, 77/*, 129-30,

140/*, 142, 144/*, 153/*, 154, 169,

212, 278, 307, 308
New York Times Index, 160
Nitze, Paul H., 108-9
Nixon, Richard M., 170, 221, 247
Israeli nuclear weapons policy of,

5, 55/*, 168/*, 209-12, 261
1960 defeat of, 97-98
1968 election of, 191
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty

undermined by, 209-10
Watergate affair and, 232-33
Yom Kippur War and, 228, 232-33
Nixon administration, 177, 303,

305

Israeli nuclear weapons and,

209-12, 223, 225, 238

Mossad favored by, 168/*
Nobel Prize, 27, 102/*, 206
North Africa, 21, 24, 36
North Atlantic Treaty

Organization (NATO), 7, 27,

36,44, 126/*, 152
Norway, 39, 48, 64, 77, 103, 111
Novy, James, 127-28
"nth" nations, 155
nuclear energy, 19, 154, 251, 273/*
nuclear espionage:

death penalty for, 243

see also Pollard, Jonathan Jay;

Vanunu, Mordecai
nuclear-free zones, 152
Nuclear Intelligence Panel (NIP),

280
Nuclear Materials and

Equipment Corporation

(NUMEC):
corporate takeovers of, 248, 252
decontamination at, 253/*, 256-57
"diverted" uranium recovered at,

257
uranium diversion allegations

and, 187-88, 242-57
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty

(NPT) (1968):
Johnson administration pressure

348

INDEX

Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty
(NPT) (1968) (com.)

on Israel and, 184, 186, 189,

190, 191, 194, 209-10, 211
signatories of, 11, 191, 209-10
Third World and, 267*
nuclear reactors:
Canada-to-india sale of, 37, 39
fast breeder, 251
in France, see Marcoule nuclear

reactor; Saclay nuclear reactor
fuel cycles in, 203n-4n, 248, 273«
in Iraq, 8-10, 11, 12, 13, 16
in Israel, see Dimona nuclear

weapons facility; Nahal Soreq

nuclear reactor
in Soviet Union, 28-29
uranium fuel rods in, 10w, 29, 52,

201, 202
in U.S., 28-29, 45«, 84, 203
see also chemical reprocessing

plants
Nuclear Regulatory Commission

(NRC), 251-52, 257, 263
Nuclear Suppliers Group, 267
nuclear test ban, 85, 274
nuclear weapons:

"boosted" fission for, 200
China's development of, 148^49,

246, 271
cost of, 66, 174, 179
"defensive," 209
Egypt and, 67, 69, 101, 129-30,

133, 138, 152, 153«
fission vs. fusion, 48-49
France's development of, 28-31,

63, 125, 145, 271
French-Israeli joint development

of, 11, 16, 23, 27^6, 59-65, 68-

70, 118-19, 155, 263
Great Britain's development of,

28, 125w-26«
Iraqi potential for, 9-10
Israeli stockpile of, 198-99, 215-

16, 225-26, 231, 235, 239, 240,

241, 261, 268, 276«, 282-83, 290-

91
Low Altitude Bombing System

for, 194
low-yield, 216, 267, 268, 271, 276,

279-80

manufacturing tolerances for,

202-3
miniaturization of, 177, 216, 217,

220
NATO's European deployment

of, 152, 155
objections to, 59, 65, 67, 138,

see also Dimona nuclear

weapons facility, objections to
Pakistan's development of, 262-

63, 298
proliferation of, 31, 74, 76, 92,

128, 148-57, 163, 209-10
South African-Israeli joint

development of, 155, 263-68,

270
Soviet development of, 48, 49-50,

280
Soviet stockpile of, 49
Stockholm Appeal against, 27-28
"Temple" code-name for, 226
test ban treaty on, 74, 105, 124-25
test sites for, 49, 63, 120, 126, 131,

145, 214/*, 265, 267-68, 271, 272
U.S. development of, 23, 25, 27,

28, 30, 46, 49, 58, 63, 83-84,

102«, 112, 138
U.S. stockpile of, 49, 215«
"zero-yield" detonations of, 131
see also hydrogen bombs; neutron

bombs
Nye, Joseph S., Jr., 283

Oak Ridge National Laboratory,

112
Office of International Strategic

Affairs, 125
Office of Special Tasks (LAKAM),

62, 131, 205, 288, 292, 295
oil, 106
Arab anti-U.S. embargo on, 232
arms deals and, 16, 22
nuclear energy and, 19
Soviet-Middle East policy and,

178
U.S.-Middle East policy and, 22,

168
see also pipelines
Oplinger, Gerald G., 272, 273, 308
Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 19, 23, 25,

83, 84-85, 91
Ora Limited, 309, 310

INDEX

349

Organization of African States

(OAS), 265n
Osirak, Israeli bombing raid on, 8-

10, 11, 12, 13, 16, (An, 259,286

Pakistan, 48, 262-63, 298
Palestine, 24, 35w, 87, 195, 298w
Palestine Liberation Organization

(PLO), 249, 288, 302
Palestinian Arabs, 35, 38, 113-15,

118, 167, 184
Pan-Arabism, 21, 40, 55
Parker, John C, 313-14
Parker, Patrick J., 235
Pean, Pierre, 64n-65n, 263, 307
Peled, Elad, 177, 210
Peres, Shimon, 25n, 104w, 117, 299
Arab question and, 34, 38w
as Ben-Gurion favorite, 33
on Bergmann, 26, 45
in coalition government, 296
as defense minister, 265
Dimona denial and, 69, 77, 78,

118, 239
Dimona financing and, 65, 66-67,

94
on Eisenhower, 42-43
IAEA inspections of Dimona

opposed by, 134
Israeli nuclear weapons program
and, 20, 23, 27, 29-30, 36, 37,
39, 43, 45, 59, 93, 129, 135, 141,
154-55, 207, 265
La von Affair and, 122-23
Pollard spy case and, 286, 303
as Rafi Party leader, 139, 140
South African visit of, 265, 275
Suez War and, 38, 42
Vanunu case and, 198, 312
Perrin, Francis, 28, 29, 39-40
Persian Gulf War, 20ln
Phalangists, 288
phosphate fields, uranium extracted

from, 19
Photographic Intelligence Division,

47, 50, 51, 54
Pincher, Chapman, 76, 77n
Pineau, Christian, 43w
pipelines:
Elat-Haifa, 192/*
Iranian, 173
plutonium, 28-29, 30, 149w, 246, 247

at Dimona, 11, 45-46, 56, 57, 69,
72, 75, 120, 130, 156, 179, 201,
202, 203, 241, 282
in fission bombs, 48, 138, 200
French production of, 28-29, 43
reactor fuel rods as source for,

lOw, 29, 52, 202
recycling of, 251
Podgorny, N. V., 175
Podhoretz, Norman, 137 n
Poland, 13w, 298
Pollack, Herman, \(An
Pollard, Jonathan Jay, 62, 285-305,
307
background of, 291-92
Israeli official denial and cover-up

of, 285, 297, 300-301, 303-5
Israeli recruitment of, 285, 292
life sentence of, 285, 297
Navy Intelligence career of, 285,

292-93
number and types of documents
provided to Israel by, 286, 293—
94, 295, 296
Power and Principle (Brzezinski), 273 n
Powers, Gary Francis, 50, 51, 74
President's Commission on the

Holocaust, 88w
Press, Frank, 273, 276-77, 279, 282
Primakov, Yevgeni M., 299
Prime, Geoffrey A., 7n
Project 700 missile program, 174,

216
"Prologue: LBJ's Foreign Affairs
Background" (Gomolak), \27n

Rabi, I. I., 102, 104
Rabin, Yitzhak, 260, 265, 269, 299
as defense minister, 296
Dimona opposed by, 67, 137-38
government positions held by, 67,

189-90, 239
nuclear weapons denial by, 190,

194, 212-13
Pollard spy case and, 286, 303
Six-Day War and, 167, 178
Rafael research and manufacturing

agency, 203
Rafi (Israeli Workers' List) Party,

139, 140, 141, 167, 179/1
Rafsanjani, Ayatollah Ali Akbar,
310

350

INDEX

Rand Daily Mail (South Africa), 279
Rather, Dan, 183
Rathjens, George H., 263, 281
"rat lines," 145
Raziel, David, 298/*
Reagan, Ronald, 8-9, 15
Israeli strategic cooperation

proposal and, 287
Reagan administration:
Iranian arms sales and, 260ft
Israeli strategic cooperation

proposal to, 286-88
Israeli-U.S. intelligence liaison

agreement and, 8-17
private vs. public reactions to

Israeli bombing raid by, 8-9
Reggane nuclear test site, 63
Republican Party, 275
Research Company for Financing

and Enterprise, 65
Reston, James A., 71
Ribicoff, Abraham, 96, 98, 261
Richard, Mark M., 305
Richardson, Elliot L., 232
robotics, 26, 202, 204, 205
Roddis, Louis H., Jr., 280
Rodman, Peter W., 228
Rosenne, Meir, 304
Rostow, Walt, 169, 176, 184, 190-91,

192
Rothschild, Baron Edmund de, 66,

192ft
Rothschild, Victor, 160-61
Rothschild family, 31
Rubinstein, Elyakim, 304
Ruina, Jack P., 276-77, 281, 282
Ruina panel, 276-77, 279-82
Rusk, Dean, 149, 150, 152, 188-89

Saclay nuclear reactor, 28, 39, 43,

263
Sadat, Anwar, 227

Begin's summit with, 4, 269
Soviets ousted by, 221
Yom Kippur War and, 222, 229,
230-31, 232, 239
Saguy, Yehoshua, 9-10, 293, 294
Saint-Gobain Techniques Nouvelles

(SGN), 29, 45, 69
SALT II, 274, 275
"Samson Option," explanation of,
137ft

Sandia, 155, 156

Sapir, Pinhas, 38ft, 65, 122, 179

satellite communication devices,

220ft
satellites, reconnaissance, 260, 261
CORONA, 156
downlinks for, 14, 15, 16
GAMBIT, 156
National Reconnaissance Office

and, 23ft
of Soviet Union, 231, 267
VELA nuclear detection, 271-72,

273, 274, 277, 278, 279, 281
see also KH-11 reconnaissance
satellite
Saturday Review, 205
Saudi Arabia, 296
Savannah River Plant, 203, 204
Scali, John, 277-78
Scbeersberg A, 181
Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., 96/*,

100, 105, 126/*
Schlesinger, James R., 227, 230
Schwartz, Harry H., 190, 191, 194
Science Liaison Bureau (LAKAM),

205
Scud missiles, 12, 234
Seaborg, Glenn T., 149-50, 152, 153
Sella, Aviem, 286, 297, 300, 301-5
Senate, U.S., 95, 124, 126, 178, 186,
209, 275
Israeli fact-finding trip by, 261-62
Senate Commerce Committee, 85
Senate Foreign Relations

Committee, 80
Sephardim, 60-61
Sabra and Shatila massacre, 288,

293, 311
Shalom, Avraham, 295, 304
Shamir, Yitzhak, 298, 299-300
in coalition government, 296
Pollard spy case and, 286
Shapiro, Zalman Mordecai:
background of, 241-^42
Bergmann and, 243, 248-^9
innocence of, 243, 250, 252, 255-

56
Israeli mission conducted by, 243,

249-50
Israeli sympathies of, 188, 242,

243, 247
Qjrlearance of, 248

INDEX

351

uranium diversion allegations
against, 188, 241-57, 261
Sharett, Moshe, 33-34, 35, 37-38, 39,

78h, 88, 146
Sharon, Ariel, 35, 38h, 67, 295
as defense minister, 287, 296
KH-11 downlink sought by, 15,

16, 17
strategic cooperation proposal of,

287-88
strategic goals of, 288-90
as trade and industry minister,
300
Shavit rockets, 104, 120
Shin Beth, 220, 304
Shlaim, Avi, 35
Sinai Peninsula:
in Six-Day War, 166, 167
in Suez War, 40, 41, 42, 43
in Yom Kippur War, 222, 231-32
Six-Day War, 131a, 156, 160, 166-67,
174, 175, 177-78, 184-85, 222,
291
Smart, Ian, 63
Smith, Gerard C, 263
Smith, Hedrick, 212-13
Solel Bone, 65
Solidarity movement, \3n
Sorenson, Theodore C, 100
Sourassi, Abraham, 61
Souster, Mark, 313
South Africa, Republic of:
Bull and, 2\6n-\ln
Israeli uranium ore purchases

from, 156, 264, 266
nuclear weapons program of
Israel and, 155, 263-68, 270,
271-83
social upheavals in, 266-67
Soviet Union, 21, 121, 155, 162, 265n
Afghanistan and, 6, 16
Arab military aid from, 7, 12, 35,
65, 103, 128, 135, 136, 138, 139,
153, 167, 170, 175-76, 183, 231,
237
CIA-Mossad operations in, I3n
defectors from, 54
emigration to Israel from, 145,

163
false alarm over Cuban-based

troops of, 275
as French nuclear target, 44

intelligence leaks to, 7n-8n
Israel as nuclear target of, 177
as Israeli nuclear target, 16-17,

66, 139, 174-75, 176-77, 214,

216, 220-21, 260, 261, 270, 278,

285, 287, 301
Israel's relationship with, 21#, 61,

175
KH-11 reconnaissance of, 13, 15,

16, 17
NATO's European nuclear

deployment opposed by, 152
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty

signed by, 191
nuclear reactors in, 28-29
nuclear weapons program of, 48,

49-50, 280
Pollard material given to, 286,

297, 299, 300
Shamir's overtures to, 298, 299-

300
Stockholm Appeal backed by, 27
Suez War and, 41
Syria's military aid from, 294
Teller's fear of first strike by,

187h
U.S. annual review of arms

system of, 286
U-2 reconnaissance of, 47, 48, 50,

74
Yom Kippur War and, 226, 227,

229, 231-35
Space Research Corporation (SRC),

2\6n
SS-21 missiles, 294
State Department, U.S., 13», 99,

113, 143, 164, 261, 262, 291
Barbour's snubbing of, 159, 161
Bureau of Intelligence and

Research (INR) of, 213
on conflict of interest, 171
Dimona intelligence and, 75, 76,

80, 100, 106
Eisenhower's commitment not

upheld by, 178
F-4 sale to Israel opposed by, 183,

211
Israeli nuclear weapons as issue

at, 214-15
Middle East military report of,

213
NUMEC and, 242

352

INDEX

State Department, U.S. (cont.)
Osirak bombing condemned by, 9
Palestinian Arabs and, 114
Policy Planning Council of, 169
Stemming the Tide (Seaborg), 149-50
Stern, 308
Stern, Yair, 298/*
Stern Gang, 297-98
Stevenson, Adlai E., 95
Stockholm Appeal (1950), 27-28
Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute (SIPRI),
\99n
Stockton, Peter D., 254, 256
Stone, Dewey D., 96
Strategic Air Command, 48, 233
Strauss, Alice, 91
Strauss, Lewis (son), 85
Strauss, Lewis L., 54, 73, 83-92, 93
as AEC chairman, 54, 73, 83, 84
African homeland for Jews

proposed by, 87
anti-Zionism of, 88
background and character of, 83,

85-86, 88-89, 92
Bergmann's secret friendship

with, 85-86, 88, 142
Dimona briefings and, 54, 73, 83,

89, 90, 91, 92
"dual loyalty" and, 89-92
Eisenhower's support for, 84, 85,

87
Holocaust consciousness of, 83,

86-87, 89, 91
Israeli nuclear weapons program

supported by, 85-86, 91
McCone and, 73, 83, 89, 91, 92
Oppenheimer attacked by, 84-85,

91
Senate's rejection of, 85
Suez Canal, 38
Suez War, 38, 39, 40-44, 175, 176,

178
Sulzberger, C. L., 129-30
Sunday Mirror (London), 308-9, 313-

15
Sunday Times (London), Vanunu
story and, 196-97, 198, 199/*,
200, 202, 262/*, 307, 308, 309,
312, 315
surface-to-air missiles, 286, 294,
298

Symington, Stuart, 95, 119, 212,

262-63
Symington Amendment, 262-63
Syria, 249
Six-Day War and, 167, 175, 184
Soviet military aid to, 7, 16, 175
in United Arab Republic, 51, 121
Yom Kippur War and, 222, 225,
227, 235/*, 238/*

Tahal, 173

Talbot, Phillips, 114/*
Talbott, Orwin C, 236-37
Tamir, Avraham, 269-70
Task Force 157, 233, 234-35
Taylor, Theodore B., 131/*
Technion-Israel Institute of

Technology, 242
telephone scrambler systems, 161
Teller, Edward, 49, 187, 188, 250,

254
Tel Nof fighter base, nuclear

weapons storage facility at, 130,

225
"Temple" nuclear weapons, 226
Thousand Days, A (Schlesinger), 125/*
"three no's," 176
Time, 180/*
Tiran, Strait of, 178
Toon, Malcolm, 261-62
TOW missiles, 310
Tricontinental Pipelines, 192/*
Tripartite Agreement (1950), 21-22
tritium, 49, 52, 200
Truman, Harry S., 21, 93, 94, 126
Tuchman, Jessica, 273/*
Tunisia, 21, 302
Tunnel, see Dimona nuclear

weapons facility, chemical

reprocessing plant at
Turkey, 48
Turner, Stansfield, 5

UNITA movement, 13/*

United Arab Republic, 51, 53, 133,
135

United Nations, 33, 109, 133, 265
Resolution 194 of, 113-14
Resolution 242 of, 186
Security Council of, 186
Suez War and, 40-41, 42, 43
Yom Kippur War and, 233

INDEX

353

Zionism denounced by, 264
United Nations Conference on the

Peaceful Uses of Atomic

Energy, 88
United States:
Great Britain's intelligence

relationship with, 3, 7
as heavy water producer, 39
Iranian arms purchases from,

260/*
Iraqi arms purchases from, 260/*
Israeli arms embargo by France

and, 183
Israeli arms purchases from, 8-9,

103, 108-10, 118, 119, 133, 135,

139, 153, 183-84, 186, 189-92,

211,213,216,221
Israeli commitments of, 176, 177,

178, 183
Israeli espionage activities in, 90,

162, 292; see also Pollard,

Jonathan Jay
Israel recognized by, 94
in Nuclear Suppliers Group, 267
nuclear umbrella sought by Israel

from, 21-23, 38,44, 55, 113
nuclear war plans of, 48/*
Persian Gulf War and, 201/*
in Tripartite Agreement, 21-22
Vietnam War and, 59, 142
United States Intelligence Board

(USIB), 254
Unit (Detachment) 8200, 229, 237,

293
uranium, 10/*, 52, 202
in China's bomb, 149/*
critical mass of, 28
for Dimona, 68, 156, 180-81
enriched, 29, 112, 132/*, 149/*, 188,

201, 219, 246, 266
as health hazard and pollutant,

243, 245, 253, 256
mining of, 3 1
natural, 19, 27, 29, 39, 201
NUMEC alleged diversion of,

187-88, 241-57, 261
oxide powder conversion of, 244
scrap recovery of, 243-44, 253
South African enriching

technique for, 266
South African sale to Israel of,

155, 264, 266

U.S. sale to Israel of, 132/*
U-2 reconnaissance planes, 42/*, 150
capabilities of, 47-48
Dimona reconnaissance by, 50,

51, 52-58, 63, 64, 72, 73, 90, 99/*,

100, 106-7, 112, 132/*, 147, 156,

157
Israeli knowledge of, 56
Powers incident and, 73-74
secrecy on, 47, 53-54
Soviet knowledge of, 51
Soviet reconnaissance by, 47, 48,

50, 74

Valindaba uranium plant, 266
Vance, Cyrus R., 274, 278
Van Doren, Charles N., 211
Vanunu, Mordecai, 262/*, 290, 307-

15
Dimona revelations of, 196-205,

219
Israeli disinformation campaign

against, 312-15
Mossad's kidnapping of, 198, 308,

315
VELA nuclear detection satellite,

271-72, 273, 274, 277, 278, 279,

281
Veliotes, Nicholas A., 222, 228,

274/*-75/*
Vietnam, People's Republic of

(North), 36, 150, 153
Vietnam War, 59, 99, 125, 128, 142,

151, 153, 189/*, 191, 250, 286
Virostek, Cynthia A., 253/*
von Hentig, Otto, 298/*
Vorster, John, 265, 266, 275

"walk-ins," 290

Wall Street Journal, 308

Walters, J. C, 278/*

Warnke, Paul C, 189-90, 191

War of Attrition, 212/*

War of Independence, 19, 113, 141

Warsaw Pact, 155

Washington Post, 96/*, 239, 307, 308

Watergate affair, 232-33

Walters, Robert D., 311

Webber, Robert T., 164, 165-66

Weinberger, Caspar, 9, 287, 302

Weisl, Edwin L., Sr., 126

Weizman, Ezer, 275-76

354

INDEX

Weizmann, Chaim, 24, 25, 45, 87
Weizmann Institute of Science, 19,

25-26, 31, 64, 79, 99n, 132n, 205,

206, 214, 219
Wells, Algie A., 92
West Bank, 113, 115, 118, 167, 184-

85, 218/*, 259
Westinghouse Electric, 242, 245, 251
Wheeler, Earle G., 178
Wiesner, Jerome B., 99n
Wigner, Eugene, 102, 104
Williams, Bruce, 237tf
World War II, 60, 260, 265

aerial reconnaissance in, 47, 56 y

88*

Yariv, Aharon, 162, 290
Years of Upheaval (Kissinger), 228
Yerdor, Reuven, 219, 293-95, 297
Yiftach, Shimon, 130

Yom Kippur War, 264
events of, 222-23, 231-32, 233-34
Israeli nuclear threat in, 179, 217,

223, 225-40
Soviet nuclear threat alleged in,

234-35

Zadok, Chaim Joseph, 303, 304
Zamir, Zvi, ISSn
Z Division, 198, 291, 307
"zero-yield" detonations, 131
Zia ul-Haq, Mohammad, 263
Zionism, Zionists, 24, 35n, 3Sn, 87n,

88, 97, 124, 140, 146, 185-86,

259, 264
Zionist Organization of America,

242
Zurhellen, Joseph O., Jr., 170, 171,

211

About the Author

Seymour M. Hersh was born in Chicago in 1937 and graduated from the
University of Chicago. He began his newspaper career as a police re-
porter for the City News Bureau in Chicago. After Army service, he was
hired by United Press International in Pierre, South Dakota. In 1963 he
joined the Associated Press in Chicago and in 1965 went to Washington
for the AP to cover the Pentagon. He served as press secretary and
speechwriter for Senator Eugene H. McCarthy in the famed "Children's
Crusade" — the 1968 New Hampshire Democratic primary campaign
against Lyndon Johnson. In 1969, as a free-lance journalist, Mr. Hersh
wrote the first account of the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam, distrib-
uting five newspaper stories on the atrocity through Dispatch News Ser-
vice. He was hired by the New York Times in 1972 and worked out of
Washington and New York until his resignation in 1979 to write The Price
of Power. In 1986, he rejoined the Times' s Washington bureau to write a
series of critical articles about Panama's Manuel Noriega. He again
joined the Times in Washington in September 1991, on a special assign-
ment.

Mr. Hersh has won more than a dozen major journalism prizes. For his
account of the My Lai massacre he earned the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for
International Reporting, the George Polk Award, the Sigma Delta Chi
Distinguished Service Award, and the Worth Bingham Prize. For his
reporting on the secret B-52 bombing of Cambodia, he was accorded the
Roy M. Howard Public Service Award and a second Polk Award in 1974.
The next year he won the Drew Pearson Award, the John Peter Zenger
Freedom of the Press Award, the Sidney Hillman Foundation Award,
and a third Polk Award for his stories on the CIA and Chile and on CIA
domestic spying. In 1981 he received a second Sigma Delta Chi Award
and his fourth Polk Award for two articles in the New York Times Maga-
zine on the involvement of former CIA agents in arms sales to Libya. He
is also the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the
Los Angeles Times Book Award for The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon
White House.

Mr. Hersh's previous books are Chemical and Biological Warfare: Ameri-
ca i Hidden Arsenal; My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath;
Cover-up: The Army i Secret Investigation of the Massacre of My Lai; The Price of
Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House; and u The Target Is Destroyed":
What Really Happened to Flight 007 and What America Knew About It. His
articles have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, the
New York Times Magazine, and the New Republic. He lives in Washington,
D.C., with his wife and three children.

I

Seymour M. Hersh was born in Chicago in 1937 and graduated from
the University of Chicago. He began his newspaper career in that city as
a police reporter. After army service, he joined United Press International
and then the Associated Press. He served as press secretary and speech
writer for Senator Eugene H. McCarthy in the 1968 New Hampshire
Democratic primary campaign. In 1969, as a free-lance journalist, Mr.
Hersh wrote the first account of the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam.
He worked for the New York Times in Washington and New York for
seven years until his resignation in 1979 to write a book about Henry
Kissinger. He has twice rejoined the Times on special assignment.

Mr. Hersh has won more than a dozen major journalism prizes,
including the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, George
Polk Awards, Sigma Delta Chi Distinguished Service Awards, the Worth
Bingham Prize, the Drew Pearson Award, the John Peter Zenger
Freedom of the Press Award, and the Sidney Hillman Foundation
Award. He is also the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award
and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for The Price of Power: Kissinger
in the Nixon White House.

He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and three children.